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...you can see.""So to speak," Clay said.
"Ha-ha."
"Have you got flashlights?" Clay asked.
"Flashlights and a Coleman lantern that should be even better, but
let's get in the kitchen first."
They followed him down the hallway, Alice walking between the two men.
Clay could hear her breathing rapidly, trying not to let the unfamiliar
surroundings freak her out, but of course it was hard. Hell, it was hard for
him. Disorienting. It would have been better if there had been even a little
light, but--
His knee bumped one of the tables Tom had mentioned, and something that
sounded all too ready to break rattled like teeth. Clay steeled himself for
the smash, and for Alice's scream. That she would scream was almost a given.
Then whatever it was, a vase or some knickknack, decided to live a little
longer and settled back into place. Still, it seemed like a very long walk
before Tom said, "Here, okay? Hard right."
The kitchen was nearly as black as the hall, and Clay had just a moment
to think of all the things he was missing and Tom must be missing more: a
digital readout on the microwave oven, the hum of the fridge, maybe light
from a neighboring house coming in through the window over the kitchen sink
and making highlights on the faucet.
"Here's the table," Tom said. "Alice, I'm going to take your hand.
Here's a chair, okay? I'm sorry if I sound like we're playing blindman's
bluff."
"It's all r-- ," she began, then gave a little scream that made Clay
jump. His hand was on the haft of his knife (now he thought of it as his)
before he even realized he'd reached for it.
"What?" Tom asked sharply. "What?"
"Nothing," she said. "Just. . . nothing. The cat. His tail. . . on my
leg."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Stupid," she added with self-contempt that made Clay
wince in the dark.
"No," he said. "Let up on yourself, Alice. It's been a tough day at the
office."
"Tough day at the office!" Alice repeated, and laughed in a way Clay
didn't care for. It reminded him of her voice when she'd called Tom's house
beautiful. He thought, That's going to get away from her, and then what do I
do? In the movies the hysterical girl gets a slap across the chops and it
always brings her around, but in the movies you can see where she is.
He didn't have to slap her, shake her, or hold her, which was what he
probably would have tried first. She heard what was in her own voice, maybe,
got hold of it, and bulldogged it down: first to a choked gargle, then to a
gasp, then to quiet.
"Sit," Tom said. "You have to be tired. You too, Clay. I'll get us some
light."
Clay felt for a chair and sat down to a table he could hardly see,
although his eyes had to be fully adjusted to the dark by now. There was a
whisper of something against his pants leg, there and gone. A low miaow.
Rafe.
"Hey, guess what?" he said to the dim shape of the girl as Tom's
footsteps receded. "Ole Rafer just put a jump in me, too." Although he
hadn't, not really.
"We have to forgive him," she said. "Without that cat, Tom would be
just as crazy as the rest of them. And that would be a shame."
"It would."
"I'm so scared," she said. "Do you think it will get better tomorrow,
in the daylight? The being scared part?"
"I don't know."
"You must be worried sick about your wife and little boy."
Clay sighed and rubbed his face. "The hard part is trying to come to
grips with the helplessness. We're separated, you see, and-- " He stopped
and shook his head. He wouldn't have gone on if she hadn't reached out and
taken his hand. Her fingers were firm and cool. "We separated in the spring.
We still live in the same little town, what my own mother would have called
a grass marriage. My wife teaches at the elementary school."
He leaned forward, trying to see her face in the dark.
"You want to know the hell of it? If this had happened a year ago,
Johnny would have been with her. But this September he made the jump to
middle school, which is almost five miles away. I keep trying to figure if
he would have been home when things went nuts. He and his friends ride the
bus. I think he would have been home. And I think he would have gone right
to her."
Or pulled his cellphone out of his backpack and called her! the
panic-rat suggested merrily . . . then bit. Clay felt himself tightening his
fingers down on Alice's and made himself stop. But he couldn't stop the
sweat from springing out on his face and arms.
"But you don't know," she said.
"No."
"My daddy runs a framing and print shop in Newton," she said. "I'm sure
he's all right, he's very self-reliant, but he'll be worried about me. Me
and my. My you-know."
Clay knew.
"I keep wondering what he did about supper," she said. "I know that's
crazy, but he can't cook a lick."
Clay thought about asking if her father had a cell phone and something
told him not to. Instead he asked, "Are you doing all right for now?"
"Yes," she said, and shrugged. "What's happened to him has happened. I
can't change it."
He thought: I wish you hadn't said that.
"My kid has a cell phone, did I tell you that?" To his own ears, his
voice sounded as harsh as a crow's caw.
"You did, actually. Before we crossed the bridge."
"Sure, that's right." He was gnawing at his lower lip and made himself
stop. "But he didn't always keep it charged. Probably I told you that, too."
"Yes."
"I just have no way of knowing." The panic-rat was out of its cage,
now. Running and biting.
Now both of her hands closed over both of his. He didn't want to give
in to her comfort-- it felt hard to let go of his grip on himself and give
in to her comfort-- but he did it, thinking she might need to give more than
he needed to take. They were holding on that way, hands linked next to the
pewter salt and pepper shakers on Tom McCourt's little kitchen table, when
Tom came back from the cellar with four flashlights and a Coleman lantern
that was still in its box.
8
The Coleman gave off enough light to make the flashlights unnecessary.
It was harsh and white, but Clay liked its brilliance, the way it drove away
every single shadow save for their own and the cat's-- which went leaping
fantastically up the wall like a Halloween decoration cut from black crepe
paper-- into hiding.
"I think you should pull the curtains," Alice said.
Tom was opening one of the plastic sacks from the Metropolitan Cafe,
the ones with DOGGY BAG on one side and PEOPLE BAG on the other. He stopped
and looked at her curiously. "Why?"
She shrugged and smiled. Clay thought it the strangest smile he had
ever seen on the face of a teenage girl. She'd cleaned the blood off her
nose and chin, but there were dark weary-circles under her eyes, the Coleman
lamp had bleached the rest of her face to a corpselike pallor, and the
smile, showing the tiniest twinkle of teeth between trembling lips from
which all the lipstick had now departed, was disorienting in its adult
artificiality. He thought Alice looked like a movie actress from the late
1940s playing a socialite on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She had the
tiny sneaker in front of her on the table. She was spinning it with one
finger. Each time she spun it, the laces flipped and clicked. Clay began to
hope she would break soon. The longer she held up, the worse it would be
when she finally let go. She had let some out, but not nearly enough. So far
he'd been the one to do most of the letting-out.
"I don't think people should see we're in here, that's all," she said.
She flicked the sneaker. What she had called a Baby Nike. It spun. The laces
flipped and clicked on Tom's highly polished table. "I think it might be . .
.bad."
Tom looked at Clay.
"She could be right," Clay said. "I don't like us being the only lit-up
house on the block, even if the light's at the back."
Tom got up and closed the curtains over the sink without another word.
There were two other windows in the kitchen, and he pulled those
curtains, too. He started back to the table, then changed course and closed
the door between the kitchen and the hall. Alice spun the Baby Nike in front
of her on the table. In the harsh, unsparing glow of the Coleman lantern,
Clay could see it was pink and purple, colors only a child could love.
Around it went. The laces flew and clicked. Tom looked at it, frowning, as
he sat down, and Clay thought: Tell her to take it off the table. Tell her
she doesn't know where it's been and you don't want it on your table. That
should be enough to set her off and then we can start getting this part out
of the way. Tell her. I think she wants you to. I think that's why she's
doing it.
But Tom only took sandwiches out of the bag-- roast beef and cheese,
ham and cheese-- and doled them out. He got a pitcher of iced tea from the
fridge ("Still cold as can be," he said), and then set down the remains of a
package of raw hamburger for the cat.
"He deserves it," he said, almost defensively. "Besides, it would only
go over with the electricity out."
There was a telephone hanging on the wall. Clay tried it, but it was
really just a formality and this time he didn't even get a dial tone. The
thing was as dead as . . . well, as Power Suit Woman, back there by Boston
Common. He sat back down and worked on his sandwich. He was hungry but
didn't feel like eating.
Alice put hers down after only three bites. "I can't," she said. "Not
now. I guess I'm too tired. I want to go to sleep. And I want to get out of
this dress. I guess I can't wash up-- not very well, anyway-- but I'd give
anything to throw this fucking dress away. It stinks of sweat and blood."
She spun the sneaker. It twirled beside the crumpled paper with her barely
touched sandwich lying on top of it. "I can smell my mother on it, too. Her
perfume."
For a moment no one said anything. Clay was at a complete loss. He had
a momentary picture of Alice subtracted from her dress, in a white bra and
panties, with her staring, hollowed-out eyes making her look like a
paper-doll. His artist's imagination, always facile and always obliging,
added tabs at the shoulders and lower legs of the image. It was shocking not
because it was sexy but because it wasn't. In the distance-- very faint--
something exploded with a dim foomp.
Tom broke the silence, and Clay blessed him for it.
"I'll bet a pair of my jeans would just about fit you, if you rolled up
the bottoms to make cuffs." He stood up. "You know what, I think you'd even
look cute in em, like Huck Finn in a girls' school production of Big River.
Come upstairs. I'm going to put out some clothes for you to wear in the
morning and you can spend the night in the guest room. I've got plenty of
pajamas, a plague of pajamas. Do you want the Coleman?"
"Just . . . I guess just a flashlight will be okay. Are you sure?"
"Yes," he said. He took one flashlight and gave her another. He looked
ready to say something about the small sneaker when she picked it up, then
seemed to think better of it. What he said was, "You can wash, too. There
may not be a lot of water, but the taps will probably draw some even with
the power out, and I'm sure we can spare a basinful." He looked over the top
of her head at Clay. "I always keep a case of bottled drinking water in the
cellar, so we're not short there."
Clay nodded. "Sleep well, Alice," he said.
"You too," she said vaguely, and then, more vaguely still: "Nice
meeting you."
Tom opened the door for her. Their flashlights bobbed, and then the
door shut again. Clay heard their footsteps on the stairs, then overhead. He
heard running water. He waited for the chug of air in the pipes, but the
flow of water stopped before the air started. A basinful, Tom had said, and
that was what she'd gotten. Clay also had blood and dirt on him he wanted to
wash off-- he imagined Tom did, too-- but he guessed there must be a
bathroom on this floor, too, and if Tom was as neat about his personal
habits as he was about his person, the water in the toilet bowl would be
clean. And there was the water in the tank as well, of course.
Rafer jumped up on Tom's chair and began washing his paws in the white
light of the Coleman lantern. Even with the lantern's steady low hiss, Clay
could hear him purring. As far as Rafe was concerned, life was still cool.
He thought of Alice twirling the small sneaker and wondered, almost
idly, if it was possible for a fifteen-year-old girl to have a nervous
breakdown.
"Don't be stupid," he told the cat. "Of course it is. Happens all the
time. They make movies of the week about it."
Rafer looked at him with wise green eyes and went on licking his paw.
Tell me more, those eyes seemed to say. Vere you beaten as a child? Did you
have ze sexual thoughts about your mother?
I can smell my mother on it. Her perfume.
Alice as a paper-doll, with tabs sticking out of her shoulders and
legs.
Don't be zilly, Rafer's green eyes seemed to say. Ze tabs go on ze
clothes, not on ze doll. Vut kind of artist are you?
"The out-of-work kind," he said. "Just shut up, why don't you?" He
closed his eyes, but that was worse. Now Rafer's green eyes floated
disembodied in the dark, like the eyes of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat:
We're all mad here, dear Alice. And under the steady hiss of the Coleman
lamp, he could still hear it purring.
9
Tom was gone fifteen minutes. When he came back, he brushed Rafe out of
his chair without ceremony and took a large, convincing bite from his
sandwich. "She's asleep," he said. "Got into a pair of my pajamas while I
waited in the hall, and then we dumped the dress in the trash together. I
think she was out forty seconds after her head hit the pillow. Throwing the
dress away was what sealed the deal, I'm convinced of it." A slight pause.
"It did indeed smell bad."
"While you were gone," Clay said, "I nominated Rafe president of the
United States. He was elected by acclamation."
"Good," Tom said. "Wise choice. Who voted?"
"Millions. Everyone still sane. They sent in thought-ballots." Clay
made his eyes very wide and tapped his temple. "I can read miiiyyynds."
Tom's chewing stopped, then began again . . . but slowly. "You know,"
he said, "under the circumstances, that's not really all that funny."
Clay sighed, sipped some iced tea, and made himself eat a little more
of his sandwich. He told himself to think of it as body gasoline, if that
was what it took to get it down. "No. Probably not. Sorry."
Tom tipped his own glass to him before drinking. "It's all right. I
appreciate the effort. Say, where's your portfolio?"
"Left it on the porch. I wanted both hands free while we negotiated Tom
McCourt's Hallway of Death."
"That's all right, then. Listen, Clay, I'm sorry as hell about your
family-"
"Don't be sorry yet," Clay said, a little harshly. "There's nothing to
be sorry about yet."
"-- but I'm really glad I ran into you. That's all I wanted to say."
"Same goes back," Clay said. "I appreciate the quiet place to spend the
night, and I'm sure Alice does, too."
"As long as Malden doesn't get loud and burn down around our ears."
Clay nodded, smiling a little. "As long as. Did you get that creepy
little shoe away from her?"
"No. She took it to bed with her like . . . I don't know, a teddy bear.
She'll be a lot better tomorrow if she sleeps through tonight."
"Do you think she will?"
"No," Tom said. "But if she wakes up scared, I'll spend the night with
her. Crawl in with her, if that's what it takes. You know I'm safe with her,
right?"
"Yes." Clay knew that he would have been safe with her, too, but he
understood what Tom was talking about. "I'm going to head north tomorrow
morning as soon as it's light. It would probably be a good idea if you and
Alice came with me."
Tom thought about this briefly, then asked, "What about her father?"
"She says he's, quote, 'very self-reliant.' Her biggest stated worry on
his behalf was what he rolled himself for dinner. What I heard under that is
that she isn't ready to know. Of course we'll have to see how she feels
about it, but I'd rather keep her with us, and I don't want to head west
into those industrial towns."
"You don't want to head west at all."
"No," Clay admitted.
He thought Tom might argue the point, but he didn't. "What about
tonight? Do you think we should stand a watch?"
Clay hadn't even considered this until now. He said, "I don't know how
much good it would do. If a crazed mob comes down Salem Street waving guns
and torches, what can we do about it?"
"Go down cellar?"
Clay thought it over. Going down cellar seemed awfully final to him--
the Bunker Defense-- but it was always possible the hypothetical crazed mob
under discussion would think the house deserted and go sweeping by. Better
than being slaughtered in the kitchen, he supposed. Maybe after watching
Alice get gang-raped.
It won't come to that, he thought uneasily. You're getting lost among
the hypothetical, that's all. Freaking in the dark. It won't come to that.
Except Boston was burning to the ground behind them. Liquor stores were
being looted and men were beating each other bloody over aluminum kegs of
beer. It had already come to that.
Tom, meanwhile, was watching him, letting him work it through . . .
which meant that maybe Tom already had. Rafe jumped into his lap. Tom put
his sandwich down and stroked the cat's back.
"Tell you what," Clay said. "If you've got a couple of comforters I can
bundle up in, why don't I spend the night out there on your porch? It's
enclosed, and it's darker than the street. Which means that I'd likely see
anyone coming long before they saw me watching. Especially if the ones
coming were phone-crazies. They didn't impress me as being into stealth."
"Nope, not the creep-up-on-you type. What if people came from around in
back? That's Lynn Avenue just a block over."
Clay shrugged, trying to indicate that they couldn't defense against
everything-- or even very much-- without saying so right out loud.
"All right," Tom said, after eating a little more of his sandwich and
feeding a scrap of ham to Rafe. "But you could come get me around three. If
Alice hasn't woken up by then, she might sleep right through."
"Why don't we just see how it goes," Clay said. "Listen, I think I know
the answer to this, but you don't have a gun, do you?"
"No," Tom said. "Not even a lonely can of Mace." He looked at his
sandwich and then put it down. When he raised his eyes to Clay's, they were
remarkably bleak. He spoke in a low voice, as people do when discussing
secret things. "Do you remember what the cop said just before he shot that
crazy man?"
Clay nodded. Hey, buddy, how ya doin? I mean, what the haps? He would
never forget it.
"I knew it wasn't like in the movies," Tom said, "but I never suspected
the enormous power of it, or the suddenness . . . and the sound when the
stuff. . . the stuff from his head . . ."
He leaned forward suddenly, one small hand curled to his mouth. The
movement startled Rafer, and the cat leaped down. Tom made three low,
muscular urking sounds, and Clay steeled himself for the vomiting that was
almost sure to follow. He could only hope he wouldn't start vomiting
himself, but he thought he might. He knew he was close, only a
feather-tickle away. Because he knew what Tom was talking about. The
gunshot, then the wet, ropy splatter on the cement.
There was no vomiting. Tom got control of himself and looked up, eyes
watering. "I'm sorry," he said. "Shouldn't have gone there."
"You don't need to be sorry."
"I think if we're going to get through whatever's ahead, we'd better
find a way to put our finer sensibilities on hold. I think that people who
can't do that . . ." He stopped, then started again. "I think that people
who can't do that. . ." He stopped a second time. The third time he was able
to finish. "I think that people who can't do that may die."
They stared at each other in the white glare of the Coleman lamp.
10
"Once we left the city, I didn't see anyone with a gun," Clay said. "At
first I wasn't really looking, and then I was."
"You know why, don't you? Except maybe for California, Massachusetts
has got the toughest gun law in the country."
Clay remembered seeing billboards proclaiming that at the state line a
few years ago. Then they'd been replaced by ones saying that if you got
picked up for driving under the influence, you'd have to spend a night in
jail.
Tom said, "If the cops find a concealed handgun in your car-- meaning
like in the glove compartment with your registration and insurance card--
they can put you away for I think seven years. Get stopped with a loaded
rifle in your pickup, even in hunting season, and you could get slapped with
a ten-thousand-dollar fine and two years of community service." He picked up
the remains of his sandwich, inspected it, put it back down again. "You can
own a handgun and keep it in your home if you're not a felon, but a license
to carry? Maybe if you've got Father O'Malley of the Boys' Club to cosign,
but maybe not even then."
"No guns might have saved some lives, coming out of the city."
"I agree with you completely," Tom said. "Those two guys fighting over
the keg of beer? Thank God neither of them had a .38."
Clay nodded.
Tom rocked back in his chair, crossed his arms on his narrow chest, and
looked around. His glasses glinted. The circle of light thrown by the
Coleman lantern was brilliant but small. "Right now, however, I wouldn't
mind having a pistol. Even after seeing the mess they make. And I consider
myself a pacifist."
"How long have you lived here, Tom?"
"Almost twelve years. Long enough to see Malden go a long way down the
road to Shitsville. It's not there yet, but boy, it's going."
"Okay, so think about it. Which of your neighbors is apt to have a gun
or guns in their house?"
Tom answered promptly. "Arnie Nickerson, across the street and three
houses up. NRA bumper sticker on his Camry-- along with a couple of yellow
ribbon decals and an old Bush-Cheney sticker-- "
"Goes without saying-- "
"And two NRA stickers on his pickup, which he equips with a camper cap
in November and takes hunting up in your part of the world."
"And we're happy to have the revenue his out-of-state hunting license
provides," Clay said. "Let's break into his house tomorrow and take his
guns."
Tom McCourt looked at him as though he were mad. "The man isn't as
paranoid as some of those militia types out in Utah-- I mean, he does live
in Taxachusetts-- but he's got one of those burglar alarm signs on his lawn
that basically says DO YOU FEEL LUCKY, PUNK, and I'm sure you must be
familiar with the NRA's stated policy as to just when their guns will be
taken away from them."
"I think it has something to do with prying their cold dead fingers-- "
"That's the one."
Clay leaned forward and stated what to him had been obvious from the
moment they'd come down the ramp from Route One: Malden was now just one
more fucked-up town in the Unicel States of America, and that country was
now out of service, off the hook, so sorry, please try your call again
later. Salem Street was deserted. He had felt that as they approached . . .
hadn't he?
No. Bullshit. You felt watched.
Really? And even if he had, was that the sort of intuition that could
be relied upon, acted upon, after a day like this one? The idea was
ridiculous.
"Tom, listen. One of us'll walk up to this guy Nackleson's house
tomorrow, after it's full daylight-- "
"It's Nickerson, and I don't think that's a very smart idea, especially
since Swami McCourt sees him kneeling inside his living room window with a
fully automatic rifle he's been saving for the end of the world. Which seems
to have rolled around."
"I'll do it," Clay said. "And I won't do it if we hear any gunshots
from the Nickerson place tonight or tomorrow morning. I certainly won't do
it if I see any bodies on the guy's lawn, with or without gunshot wounds. I
watched all those old Twilight Zone episodes, too-- the ones where
civilization turns out to be nothing more than a thin layer of shellac."
"If that," Tom said gloomily. "Idi Amin, Pol Pot, the prosecution
rests."
"I'll go with my hands raised. Ring the doorbell. If someone answers,
I'll say I just want to talk. What's the worst that can happen? He tells me
to get lost."
"No, the worst that can happen is he can shoot you dead on his fucking
welcome mat and leave me with a motherless teenage girl," Tom said sharply.
"Smart off about old Twilight Zone episodes all you want, just don't forget
those people you saw today, fighting outside the T station in Boston."
"That was . . . I don't know what it was, but those people were
clinically insane. You can't doubt that, Tom."
"What about Bible-Thumping Bertha? And the two men fighting over the
keg? Were they insane?"
No, of course they hadn't been, but if there was a gun in that house
across the street, he still wanted it. And if there was more than one, he
wanted Tom and Alice each to have one, too.
"I'm thinking about going north over a hundred miles," Clay said. "We
might be able to boost a car and drive some of it, but we might have to walk
the whole way. Do you want to go with just knives for protection? I'm asking
you as one serious man to another, because some of the people we run into
are going to have guns. I mean, you know that."
"Yes," Tom said. He ran his hands through his neatly trimmed hair,
giving it a comic ruffle. "And I know that Arnie and Beth are probably not
home. They were gadget-nuts as well as gun-nuts. He was always gabbing on
his cell phone when he went by in that big Dodge Ram Detroit phallus of
his."
"See? There you go."
Tom sighed. "All right. Depending on how things look in the morning.
Okay?"
"Okay." Clay picked up his sandwich again. He felt a little more like
eating now.
"Where did they go?" Tom asked. "The ones you call the phone-crazies.
Where did they go?"
"I don't know."
"I'll tell you what I think," Tom said. "I think they crawled into the
houses and the buildings around sundown and died."
Clay looked at him doubtfully.
"Look at it reasonably and you'll see I'm right," Tom said. "This was
almost certainly some sort of terrorist act, would you agree?"
"That seems the most likely explanation, although I'll be damned if I
know how any signal, no matter how subversive, could have been programmed to
do what this one did."
"Are you a scientist?"
"You know I'm not. I'm an artist."
"So when the government tells you they can guide computerized
smart-bombs through bunker doors in the floor of the desert from aircraft
carriers that are maybe two thousand miles away, all you can do is look at
the photos and accept that the technology exists."
"Would Tom Clancy lie to me?" Clay asked, unsmiling.
"And if that technology exists, why not accept this one, at least on a
provisional basis?"
"Okay, spell it out. Small words, please."
"At about three o'clock this afternoon, a terrorist organization, maybe
even a tinpot government, generated some sort of signal or pulse. For now we
have to assume that this signal was carried by every cell phone operating in
the entire world. We'll hope that wasn't the case, but for now I think we
have to assume the worst."
"Is it over?"
"I don't know," Tom said. "Do you want to pick up a cell phone and find
out?"
"Touchy," Clay said. "That's how my little boy says touchй." And
please, God, how he's still saying it.
"But if this group could transmit a signal that would send everyone
hearing it insane," Tom said, "isn't it possible that the signal could also
contain a directive for those receiving it to kill themselves five hours
later? Or perhaps to simply go to sleep and stop breathing?"
"I would say that's impossible."
"I would have said a madman coming at me with a knife across from the
Four Seasons Hotel was impossible," Tom said. "Or Boston burning flat while
the city's entire population-- that part of it lucky enough not to have cell
phones, that is-- left by the Mystic and the Zakim."
He leaned forward, looking at Clay intently. He wants to believe this,
Clay thought. Don't waste a lot of time trying to talk him out of it,
because he really, really wants to.
"In a way, this is no different from the bioterrorism the government
was so afraid of after nine-eleven," he said. "By using cell phones, which
have become the dominant form of communication in our daily lives, you
simultaneously turn the populace into your own conscript army-- an army
that's literally afraid of nothing, because it's insane-- and you break down
the infrastructure. Where's the National Guard tonight?"
"Iraq?" Clay ventured. "Louisiana?"
It wasn't much of a joke and Tom didn't smile. "It's nowhere. How do
you use a homeland force that now depends almost entirely on the cellular
network to even mobilize? As for airplanes, the last one I've seen flying
was the little one that crashed on the corner of Charles and Beacon." He
paused, then went on, looking straight across the table into Clay's eyes.
"All this they did . . . whoever they is. They looked at us from wherever it
is they live and worship their gods, and what did they see?"
Clay shook his head, fascinated by Tom's eyes, shining behind his
spectacles. They were almost the eyes of a visionary.
"They saw we had built the Tower of Babel all over again . . . and on
nothing but electronic cobwebs. And in a space of seconds, they brushed
those cobwebs aside and our Tower fell. All this they did, and we three are
like bugs that happened, by dumb dim luck alone, to have avoided the fall of
a giant's foot. All this they did, and you think they could not have encoded
a signal telling the affected ones to simply fall asleep and stop breathing
five hours later? What's that trick, compared to the first one? Not much,
I'd say."
Clay said, "I'd say it's time we got some sleep."
For a moment Tom remained as he was, hunched across the table a little,
looking at Clay as if unable to understand what Clay had said. Then he
laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you've got a point. I get wound up. Sorry."
"Not at all," Clay said. "I hope you're right about the crazies being
dead." He paused, then said: "I mean . . . unless my boy . . . Johnny-Gee .
. ." He couldn't finish. Partly or maybe mostly because if Johnny had tried
to use his phone this afternoon and had gotten the same call as Pixie Light
and Power Suit Woman, Clay wasn't sure he wanted his son to still be alive.
Tom reached across the table to him and Clay took the other man's
delicate, long-fingered hand in both of his. He saw this happening as if he
were outside his body, and when he spoke, he didn't seem to be the one
speaking, although he could feel his mouth moving and the tears that had
begun to fall from his eyes.
"I'm so scared for him," his mouth was saying. "I'm scared for both of
them, but mostly for my kid."
"It'll be all right," Tom said, and Clay knew he meant well, but the
words struck terror into his heart just the same, because it was just one of
those things you said when there was really nothing else. Like You'll get
over it or He's in a better place.
11
Alice's shrieks woke Clay from a confused but not unpleasant dream of
being in the Bingo Tent at the Akron State Fair. In the dream he was six
again-- maybe even younger but surely no older-- and crouched beneath the
long table where his mother was seated, looking at a forest of lady-legs and
smelling sweet sawdust while the caller intoned, "B-12, players, B-12! It's
the sunshine vitamin!"
There was one moment when his subconscious mind tried to integrate the
girl's cries into the dream by insisting he was hearing the Saturday noon
whistle, but only a moment. Clay had let himself go to sleep on Tom's porch
after an hour of watching because he was convinced that nothing was going to
happen out there, at least not tonight. But he must have been equally
convinced that Alice wouldn't sleep through, because there was no real
confusion once his mind identified her shrieks for what they were, no
groping for where he was or what was going on. At one moment he was a small
boy crouching under a bingo table in Ohio; at the next he was rolling off
the comfortably long couch on Tom McCourt's enclosed front porch with the
comforter still wrapped around his lower legs. And somewhere in the house,
Alice Maxwell, howling in a register almost high enough to burst crystal,
articulated all the horror of the day just past, insisting with one scream
after another that such things surely could not have happened and must be
denied.
Clay tried to rid his lower legs of the comforter and at first it
wouldn't let go. He found himself hopping toward the inside door and pulling
at it in a kind of panic while he looked out at Salem Street, sure that
lights would start going on up and down the block even though he knew the
power was out, sure that someone-- maybe the gun-owning, gadget-loving Mr.
Nickerson from up the street-- would come out on his lawn and yell for
someone to for chrissake shut that kid up. Don't make me come down there!
Arnie Nickerson would yell. Don't make me come down there and shoot her!
Or her screams would draw the phone-crazies like moths to a bug light.
Tom might think they were dead, but Clay believed it no more than he
believed in Santa's workshop at the North Pole.
But Salem Street-- their block of it, anyway, just west of the town
center and below the part of Maiden Tom had called Granada Highlands--
remained dark and silent and without movement. Even the glow of the fire
from Revere seemed to have diminished.
Clay finally rid himself of the comforter and went inside and stood at
the foot of the stairs, looking up into the blackness. Now he could hear
Tom's voice-- not the words, but the tone, low and calm and soothing. The
girl's chilling shrieks began to be broken up by gasps for breath, then by
sobs and inarticulate cries that became words. Clay caught one of them,
nightmare. Tom's voice went on and on, telling lies in a reassuring drone:
everything was all right, she would see, things would look better in the
morning. Clay could picture them sitting side by side on the guestroom bed,
each dressed in a pair of pajamas with TM monograms on the breast pockets.
He could have drawn them like that. The idea made him smile.
When he was convinced she wasn't going to resume screaming, he went
back to the porch, which was a bit chilly but not uncomfortable once he was
wrapped up snugly in the comforter. He sat on the couch, surveying what he
could see of the street. To the left, east of Tom's house, was a business
district. He thought he could see the traffic light marking the entrance
into the town square. The other way-- which was the way they'd come-- more
houses. All of them still in this deep trench of night.
"Where are you?" he murmured. "Some of you headed north or west, and
still in your right minds. But where did the rest of you go?"
No answer from the street. Hell, maybe Tom was right-- the cell phones
had sent them a message to go crazy at three and drop dead at eight. It
seemed too good to be true, but he remembered feeling the same way about
recordable CDs.
Silence from the street in front of him; silence from the house behind
him. After a while, Clay leaned back on the couch and let his eyes close. He
thought he might doze, but doubted he would actually go to sleep again.
Eventually, however, he did, and this time there were no dreams. Once,
shortly before first light, a mongrel dog came up Tom McCourt's front walk,
looked in at him as he lay snoring in his cocoon of comforter, and then
moved on. It was in no hurry; pickings were rich in Malden that morning and
would be for some time to come.
12
"Clay. Wake up."
A hand, shaking him. Clay opened his eyes and saw Tom, dressed in a
pair of blue jeans and a gray work-shirt, bending over him. The front porch
was lit by strong pale light. Clay glanced at his wristwatch as he swung his
feet off the couch and saw it was twenty past six.
"You need to see this," Tom said. He looked pale, anxious, and grizzled
on both sides of his mustache. The tail of his shirt was untucked on one
side and his hair was still standing up in back.
Clay looked at Salem Street, saw a dog with something in its mouth
trotting past a couple of dead cars half a block west, saw nothing else
moving. He could smell a faint smoky funk in the air and supposed it was
either Boston or Revere. Maybe both, but at least the wind had died. He
turned his gaze to Tom.
"Not out here," Tom said. He kept his voice low. "In the backyard. I
saw when I went in the kitchen to make coffee before I remembered coffee's
out, at least for the time being. Maybe it's nothing, but . . . man, I don't
like this."
"Is Alice still sleeping?" Clay was groping under the comforter for his
socks.
"Yes, and that's good. Never mind your socks and shoes, this ain't
dinner at the Ritz. Come on."
He followed Tom, who was wearing a pair of comfortable-looking scuffs,
down the hall to the kitchen. A half-finished glass of iced tea was standing
on the counter.
Tom said, "I can't get started without some caffeine in the morning,
you know? So I poured myself a glass of that stuff-- help yourself, by the
way, it's still nice and cold-- and I pushed back the curtain over the sink
to take a look out at my garden. No reason, just wanted to touch base with
the outside world. And I saw . . . but look for yourself."
Clay peered out through the window over the sink. There was a neat
little brick patio behind the house with a gas grill on it. Beyond the patio
was Tom's yard, half-grass and half-garden. At the back was a high board
fence with a gate in it. The gate was open. The bolt holding it closed must
have been shot across because it now hung askew, looking to Clay like a
broken wrist. It occurred to him that Tom could have made coffee on the gas
grill, if not for the man sitting in his garden beside what had to be an
ornamental wheelbarrow, eating the soft inside of a split pumpkin and
spitting out the seeds. He was wearing a mechanic's coverall and a greasy
cap with a faded letter B on it. Written in faded red script on the left
breast of his coverall was George. Clay could hear the soft smooching sounds
his face made every time he dove into the pumpkin.
"Fuck," Clay said in a low voice. "It's one of them."
"Yes. And where there's one there'll be more."
"Did he break the gate to get in?"
"Of course he did," Tom said. "I didn't see him do it, but it was
locked when I left yesterday, you can depend on that. I don't have the
world's best relationship with Scottoni, the guy who lives on the other
side. He has no use for 'fellas like me,' as he's told me on several
occasions." He paused, then went on in a lower voice. He had been speaking
quietly to begin with, and now Clay had to lean toward him to hear him. "You
know what's crazy? I know that guy. He works at Sonny's Texaco, down in the
Center. It's the only gas station in town that still does repairs. Or did.
He replaced a radiator hose for me once. Told me about how he and his
brother made a trip to Yankee Stadium last year, saw Curt Schilling beat the
Big Unit. Seemed like a nice enough guy. Now look at him! Sitting in my
garden eating a raw pumpkin!"
"What's going on, you guys?" Alice asked from behind them.
Tom turned around, looking dismayed. "You don't want to see this," he
said.
"That won't work," Clay said. "She's got to see it."
He smiled at Alice, and it wasn't that hard to smile. There was no
monogram on the pocket of the pajamas Tom had loaned her, but they were
blue, just as he had imagined, and she looked most dreadfully cute in them,
with her feet bare and the pants legs rolled up to her shins and her hair
tousled with sleep. In spite of her nightmares, she looked better rested
than Tom. Clay was willing to bet she looked better rested than he did, too.
"It's not a car wreck, or anything," he said. "Just a guy eating a
pumpkin in Tom's backyard."
She stood between them, putting her hands on the lip of the sink and
rising up on the balls of her feet to look out. Her arm brushed Clay's, and
he could feel the sleep-warmth still radiating from her skin. She looked for
a long time, then turned to Tom.
"You said they all killed themselves," she said, and Clay couldn't tell
if she was accusing or mock scolding. She probably doesn't know herself, he
thought.
"I didn't say for sure," Tom replied, sounding lame.
"You sounded pretty sure to me." She looked out again. At least, Clay
thought, she wasn't freaking out. In fact he thought she looked remarkably
composed-- if a little Chaplinesque-- in her slightly outsize pajamas. "Uh .
. . guys?"
"What?" they said together.
"Look at the little wheelbarrow he's sitting next to. Look at the
wheel."
Clay had already seen what she was talking about-- the litter of
pumpkin-shell, pumpkin-meat, and pumpkin seeds.
"He smashed the pumpkin on the wheel to break it open and get to what's
inside," Alice said. "I guess he's one of them-- "
"Oh, he's one of them, all right," Clay said. George the mechanic was
sitting in the garden with his legs apart, allowing Clay to see that since
yesterday afternoon he'd forgotten all his mother had taught him about
dropping trou before you did number one.
"-- but he used that wheel as a tool. That doesn't seem so crazy to
me."
"One of them was using a knife yesterday," Tom said. "And there was
another guy jabbing a couple of car aerials."
"Yes, but . . . this seems different, somehow."
"More peaceful, you mean?" Tom glanced back at the intruder in his
garden. "I wouldn't want to go out there and find out."
"No, not that. I don't mean peaceful. I don't know exactly how to
explain it."
Clay thought he had an idea of what she was talking about. The
aggression they had witnessed yesterday had been a blind, forward-rushing
thing. An anything-that-comes-to-hand thing. Yes, there had been the
businessman with the knife and the muscular young guy jabbing the car
aerials in the air as he ran, but there had also been the man in the park
who'd torn off the dog's ear with his teeth. Pixie Light had also used her
teeth. This seemed a lot different, and not just because it was about eating
instead of killing. But like Alice, Clay couldn't put his finger on just how
it was different.
"Oh God, two more," Alice said.
Through the open back gate came a woman of about forty in a dirty gray
pants suit and an elderly man dressed in jogging shorts and a T-shirt with
gray power printed across the front. The woman in the pants suit had been
wearing a green blouse that now hung in tatters, revealing the cups of a
pale green bra beneath. The elderly man was limping badly, throwing his
elbows out in a kind of buck-and-wing with each step to keep his balance.
His scrawny left leg was caked with dried blood, and that foot was missing
its running shoe. The remains of an athletic sock, grimed with dirt and
blood, flapped from his left ankle. The elderly man's longish white hair
hung around his vacant face in a kind of cowl. The woman in the pants suit
was making a repetitive noise that sounded like "Goom! Goom!" as she
surveyed the yard and the garden. She looked at George the Pumpkin Eater as
though he were of no account at all, then strode past him toward the
remaining cucumbers. Here she knelt, snatched one from its vine, and began
to munch. The old man in the gray power shirt marched to the edge of the
garden and then only stood there awhile like a robot that has finally run
out of juice. He was wearing tiny gold glasses-- reading glasses, Clay
thought-- that gleamed in the early light. He looked to Clay like someone
who had once been very smart and was now very stupid.
The three people in the kitchen crowded together, staring out the
window, hardly breathing.
The old man's gaze settled on George, who threw away a piece of
pumpkin-shell, examined the rest, and then plowed his face back in and
resumed his breakfast. Far from behaving aggressively toward the newcomers,
he seemed not to notice them at all.
The old man limped forward, bent, and began to tug at a pumpkin the
size of a soccer ball. He was less than three feet from George. Clay,
remembering the pitched battle outside the T station, held his breath and
waited.
He felt Alice grasp his arm. All the sleep-warmth had departed her
hand. "What's he going to do?" she asked in a low voice.
Clay only shook his head.
The old man tried to bite the pumpkin and only bumped his nose. It
should have been funny but wasn't. His glasses were knocked askew and he
pushed them back into place. It was a gesture so normal that for a brief
moment Clay felt all but positive that he was the one who was crazy.
"Goom!" cried the woman in the tattered blouse, and threw away her
half-eaten cucumber. She had spied a few late tomatoes and crawled toward
them with her hair hanging in her face. The seat of her pants was badly
soiled.
The old man had spied the ornamental wheelbarrow. He took his pumpkin
to it, then seemed to register George, sitting there beside it. He looked at
him, head cocked. George gestured with one orange-coated hand at the
wheelbarrow, a gesture Clay had seen a thousand times.
"Be my guest," Tom murmured. "I'll be damned."
The old man fell on his knees in the garden, a movement that obviously
caused him considerable pain. He grimaced, raised his lined face to the
brightening sky, and uttered a chuffing grunt. Then he lifted the pumpkin
over the wheel. He studied the line of descent for several moments, elderly
biceps trembling, and brought the pumpkin down, smashing it open. It fell in
two meaty halves. What happened next happened fast. George dropped his own
mostly eaten pumpkin in his lap, rocked forward, grabbed the old man's head
in his big, orange-stained hands, and twisted it. They heard the crack of
the old man's breaking neck even through the glass. His long white hair
flew. His small spectacles disappeared into what Clay thought were beets.
His body spasmed once, then went limp. George dropped it. Alice began to
scream and Tom covered her mouth with his hand. Her eyes, bulging with
terror, peered over the top of it. Outside in the garden, George picked up a
fresh chunk of pumpkin and began calmly to eat.
The woman in the shredded blouse looked around for a moment, casually,
then plucked another tomato and bit into it. Red juice ran from her chin and
trickled down the dirty line of her throat. She and George sat there in Tom
McCourt's backyard garden, eating vegetables, and for some reason the name
of one of his favorite paintings popped into Clay's mind: The Peaceable
Kingdom.
He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until Tom looked at him bleakly and
said: "Not anymore."
13
The three of them were still standing there at the kitchen window five
minutes later when an alarm began to bray at some distance. It sounded tired
and hoarse, as though it would run down soon.
"Any idea what that might be?" Clay asked. In the garden, George had
abandoned the pumpkins and dug up a large potato. This had brought him
closer to the woman, but he showed no interest in her. At least not yet.
"My best guess would be that the generator at the Safeway in the Center
just gave up," Tom said. "There's probably a battery-powered alarm in case
that happens, because of all the perishables. But that's only a guess. For
all I know, it's the First Malden Bank and T-- "
"Look!" Alice said.
The woman stopped in the act of plucking another tomato, got up, and
walked toward the east side of Tom's house. George got to his feet as she
passed, and Clay was sure he meant to kill her as he had the old man. He
winced in anticipation and saw Tom reaching for Alice, to turn her away. But
George only followed the woman, disappearing around the corner of the house
behind her.
Alice turned and hurried toward the kitchen door.
"Don't let them see you!" Tom called in a low, urgent voice, and went
after her.
"Don't worry," she said.
Clay followed, worrying for all of them.
They reached the dining room door in time to watch the woman in her
filthy pants suit and George in his e...
