Cabal

THE TOLL

The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory jell covered by cloud till it seemed there’d be no glow at all, then casting its rags off one by one. As the light grew so did Boone’s discomfort. Rummaging in the glove compartment Lori rooted out a pair of sunglasses, which Boone put on to keep the worst of the light from his sensitized eyes. Even then he had to keep his head down, his face averted from the brightening East.

They spoke scarcely at all. Lori was too concerned to keep her weary mind on the task of driving, and Boone made no attempt to break the silence. He had thoughts of his own, but none that he could have articulated to the woman at his side. In the past Lori had meant a great deal to him, he knew, but making contact with those feelings now was beyond him. He felt utterly removed from his life with her, indeed from life at all. Through the years of his sickness he’d clung always to the threads of consequence he saw in living: how one action resulted in another; this feeling in that. He’d got through, albeit with stumbling steps, by seeing how the path behind him became the one ahead. Now he could see neither forward nor backward, except dimly.

Clearest in his head, Baphomet, the Divided One. Of all Midian’s occupants it was the most powerful and the most vulnerable, taken apart by ancient enemies but preserved, suffering and suffering, in the flame Lylesburg had called the Trial Fire. Boone had gone into Baphomet’s pit hoping to argue his case; but it was the Baptiser that had spoken, oracles from a severed head. He could not now remember its pronouncements but he knew the news had been grim.

Amongst his memories of the whole and the human, sharpest was that of Decker. He could piece together several fragments of their shared history, and knew it should enrage him, but he could not find it in himself to hate the man who’d led him to Midian’s deeps, anymore than he could love the woman who’d brought him out of them. They were part of some other biography; not quite his.

What Lori understood of his condition he didn’t know, but he suspected she remained for the most part ignorant. Whatever she guessed, she seemed content to accept him as he was, and in a simple, animal way he needed her presence too much to risk telling her the truth, assuming that he could have found the words. He was as much and as little as he was. Man. Monster. Dead. Alive. In Midian he’d seen all these states in a single creature: they were, most likely, all true of him. The only people who might have helped him understand how such contraries could co-exist were behind him, in the necropolis. They’d only begun the long, long process of educating him in Midian’s history when he’d defied them. Now he was exiled from their presence forever, and he’d never know.

There was a paradox. Lylesburg had warned him clearly enough as they’d stood together in the tunnels and listened to Lori’s cries for help; told him unequivocally that if he broke cover he broke his covenant with the Breed.

“Remember what you are now,” he’d said. “You can’t save her, and keep our refuge. So you have to let her die.”

Yet he couldn’t. Though Lori belonged in another life, a life he’d lost forever, he couldn’t leave her to the fiend. What that meant, if anything, was beyond his capacity to grasp right now. These few circling thoughts aside he was sealed in the moment he was living, and the next moment, and the moment after that; moving second by second through his life as the car moved over the road, ignorant of the place it had been and blind to where it was headed.

They were almost within sight of the Sweetgrass Inn when it occurred to Lori that if Sheryl’s body had been found at the Hudson Bay Sunset there was a chance their destination would already be crawling with police.

She stopped the car.

“What’s wrong?” Boone asked.

She told him.

“Perhaps it’d be safer if I went there alone,” she said. “If it’s safe I’ll get my things and come back for you.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not so good.”

She couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but his voice carried fear in it.

“I’ll be quick,” she said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s better we stay together,” he replied. He put his hands over his face, as he had at Midian’s gates. “Don’t leave me alone,” he said, his voice hushed. “I don’t know where I am, Lori. I don’t even know who I am. Stay with me.”

She leaned over to him, and kissed the back of his hand. He let both fall from his face. She kissed his cheek, then his mouth. They drove on together to the Inn.

In fact her fears proved groundless. If Sheryl’s body had indeed been located overnight which was perhaps unlikely given its location—no connection had been made with the Inn. Indeed not only were there no police to bar their way there was little sign of life at all. Only a dog yapping in one of the upper rooms, and a baby crying somewhere. Even the lobby was deserted, the desk clerk too occupied with the Morning Show to keep his post. The sound of laughter and music followed them through the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. Despite the ease of it, by the time they’d reached the room Lori’s hands were trembling so much she could scarcely align the key with the lock. She turned to Boone for assistance, only to discover that he was no longer close behind her but lingering at the top of the stairs, looking back and forth along the corridor. Again, she cursed the sunglasses, which prevented her reading his feelings with any certainty. At least until he backed against the wall, his fingers seeking some purchase though there was none to be had.

“What’s the problem, Boone?”

“There’s nobody here,” he returned.

“Well that’s good for us, isn’t it?”

“But I can smell…”

“What can you smell?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me.”

“I smell blood.”

“Boone?”

“I smell so much blood.”

“Where? Where from?”

He made no answer, nor did he look her way, but stared off down the corridor.

“I’ll be quick,” she told him. “Just stay where you are, and I’ll be back with you.”

Going down on her haunches she clumsily fitted key to lock, then stood up and opened the door. There was no scent of blood from the room, only the stale perfume of the previous night. It reminded her instantly of Sheryl, and of the good times they’d had together, even in the midst of such bad. Less than twenty-four hours ago she’d been laughing in this very room, and talking of her killer as the man of her dreams.

Thinking of which, Lori looked back towards Boone. He was still pressed against the wall, as if it was the only way to be certain the world wasn’t toppling. Leaving him to it, she stepped into the room, and went about her packing. First into the bathroom, to collect up her toiletries, and then back into the bedroom to gather her strewn clothes. It was only as she put her bag on the bed to pack it that she saw the crack in the wall. It was as if something had hit it from the other side, very hard. The plaster had come away in clods, and littered the floor between the twin beds. She stared at the crack a moment. Had the party got so riotous they’d started throwing the furniture around?

Curious, she crossed to the wall. It was little more than a plasterboard partition, and the impact from the far side had actually opened a hole in it. She pulled a piece of loose plaster away and put her eye to the aperture.

The curtains were still drawn in the room beyond, but the sun was strong enough to penetrate, lending the air an ochre gloom. Last night’s party must have been even more debauched than the one the night before, she thought. Wine stains on the walls, and the celebrants still asleep on the floor.

But the smell: it wasn’t wine.

She stepped back from the wall, her stomach turning.

Fruit spilled no such juice. Another step. Flesh did. And if it was blood she smelt then it was blood she saw, and if it was blood she saw then the sleepers were not sleeping, because who lies down in an abattoir? Only the dead.

She went quickly to the door. Down the corridor Boone was no long standing, but crouched against the wall, hugging his knees. His face, as he turned to her, was full of distressing tics.

“Get up,” she told him.

“I smell blood,” he said softly.

“You’re right. So get up. Quickly. Help me.”

But he was rigid; rooted to the floor. She knew this posture of old: hunched in a corner, shivering like a beaten dog. In the past she’d had comforting words to offer, but there was no time for such solace now. Perhaps someone had survived the blood-bath in the next room. If so, she had to help, with Boone or without. She turned the handle of the slaughterhouse door, and opened it.

As the smell of death came out to meet her Boone started to moan.

“… blood…” she heard him say.

Everywhere, blood. She stood and stared for a full minute before forcing herself over the threshold to search for some sign of life. But even the most cursory glance at each of the corpses confirmed that the same nightmare had claimed all six. She knew his name too. He’d left his mark; wiping their features out with his knives the way he had Sheryl’s. Three of the six he’d caught in flagrante delicto. Two men and a woman, partially undressed and slumped over each other on the bed, their entanglements fatal. The others had died lying in spirit sodden comas around the room, most likely without even waking. Hand over her mouth to keep the smell out and the sobs in, she retreated from the room, the taste of her stomach in her throat. As she stepped out into the corridor her peripheral vision caught sight of Boone. He wasn’t sitting any longer, but moving purposefully down the passageway towards her.

“We have… to get… out,” she said.

He made no sign that he’d even heard her voice, but moved past her towards the open door.

“Decker…” she said, “… it was Decker.”

He still offered no reply.

“Talk to me, Boone.”

He murmured something.

“He could still be here,” she said. “We have to hurry.”

But he was already stepping inside to view the carnage at closer quarters. She had no desire to look again. Instead she returned to the adjacent room to finish her hurried packing. As she went about it she heard Boone moving around the room next door, his breathing almost pained. Afraid of leaving him on his own for any time she gave up on trying to collect all but the most telling items the photographs and an address book chief amongst them and that done went out into the corridor.

The din of police sirens was there to meet her, their panic fuelling hers. Though the cars were still some way off she couldn’t doubt their destination. Louder with every whoop, they were coming to the Sweetgrass, hot for the guilty.

She called for Boone.

“I’m finished!” she said. “Let’s get going!”

There was no reply from the room.

“Boone?”

She went to the door trying to keep her eyes off the bodies. Boone was on the far side of the room, silhouetted against the curtains. His breath was no longer audible.

“Do you hear me?” she said.

He didn’t move a muscle. She could read no expression on his face it was too dark but she could see that he’d taken the sunglasses off.

“We haven’t got much time,” she said. “Will you come on?”

As she spoke, he exhaled. It was no normal breath; she knew that even before the smoke started from his throat. As it came he raised his hands to his mouth as if to stop it, but at his chin they halted and began to convulse.

“Get out,” he said, on the same breath that brought the smoke.

She couldn’t move, or even take her eyes off him. The murk was not so thick she couldn’t see the change coming, his face re-ordering itself behind the veil, light burning in his arms and climbing his neck in waves to melt the bones of his head.

“I don’t want you to see,” he begged her, his voice deteriorating.

Too late. She’d seen the man with fire in his flesh at Midian; and the dog-headed painter, and more besides: Boone had all their diseases in his system, undoing his humanity before her eyes. He was the stuff of nightmares. No wonder he howled, head thrown back as his face was forfeited.

The sound was almost cancelled by the sirens, however. They could be no more than a minute from the door. If she went now she might still outpace them.

In front of her, Boone was done, or undone, entirely. He lowered his head, remnants of smoke evaporating around him. Then he began to move, his new sinews bearing him lightly, like an athlete.

Even now she hoped he understood his jeopardy and was coming to the door to be saved. But no. It was to the dead he moved, where the ménage a trois still lay, and before she had the wit to look away one of his clawed hands was reaching down and claiming a body from the heap, drawing it up towards his mouth.

“No, Boone!” she shrieked. “No!”

Her voice found him, or a part that was still Boone, lost in the chaos of this monster. He let the meat drop a little and looked up at her. He still had his blue eyes, and they were full of tears.

She started towards him.

“Don’t,” she begged.

For an instant he seemed to weigh up love and appetite. Then he forgot her, and lifted the human meat to his lips. She didn’t watch his jaws close on it, but the sound reached her, and it was all she could do to stay conscious, hearing him tear and chew.

From below, brakes screeching, doors slamming. In moments they’d have the building surrounded, blocking any hope of escape; moments later they’d be coming up the stairs. She had no choice but to leave the beast to its hunger. Boone was lost to her.

She elected not to return the way they’d come, but to take the back stairs. The decision was well made; even as she turned the corner of the upper corridor she heard the police at the other end, rapping on doors. Almost immediately afterwards she heard the sound of forced entry from above, and exclamations of disgust. This couldn’t be on finding Boone, he wasn’t behind a locked door. Clearly they’d discovered something else on the upper corridor. She didn’t need to hear the morning news to know what. Her instinct told her loud and strong how thorough Decker had been the night before. There was a dog alive somewhere in the building, and he’d overlooked a baby in his heat, but the rest he’d taken. He’d just come straight back from his failure at Midian and killed every living soul in the place.

Above and below the investigating officers were discovering that very fact, and the shock of it made them incompetent. She had no difficulty slipping out of the building and away into the scrub at the back. Only as she reached the cover of the trees did one of the cops appear round the corner of the building, but even he had other business than the search. Once out of sight of his colleagues he threw up his breakfast in the dirt, then scrupulously wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and went back to the job in hand.

Secure that they wouldn’t start a search of the exterior until they’d finished inside, she waited. What would they do to Boone when they found him? Shoot him down, most likely. There was nothing she could think of to prevent it. But the minutes passed, and though there were shouts from within, there was no sound of gunfire. They must have found him by now. Maybe she’d get a better grasp of what had happened from the front of the building.

The Inn was shielded on three sides by shrubbery and trees. It wasn’t difficult to make her way through the undergrowth to the flank, her movement countered by an influx of rifle-bearing cops from the front, to take up stations at the rear exit. Two more patrol cars were arriving at the scene. The first contained further armed troopers, the second a selection of interested parties. Two ambulance vans followed.

They’ll need more, she thought grimly. A lot more.

Though the congregation of so many cars and armed men had attracted an audience of passers by, the scene at the front was subdued, even casual. There were as many men standing and staring at the building as moving to enter and explore it. They grasped the point now. The place was a two-storey coffin. More people had probably been murdered here in one night than had died by violence in Shere Neck over its entire life. Anyone here this bright morning was part of history. The knowledge hushed them.

Her attention went from the witnesses to a knot of people standing around the lead car. A break in the circle of debaters allowed for a glimpse of the man at its centre. Sober-suited, polished spectacles glinting in the sun. Decker held court. What was he arguing for: a chance to coax his patient out into the open air? If that was his pitch he was being overruled by the only member of the circle in uniform, Shere Neck’s Police Chief presumably, who dismissed his appeal with a wave of the hand, then stepped out of the argument entirely. From a distance it was impossible to read Decker’s response, but he seemed perfectly in control of himself, leaning to speak into the ear of one of the others, who nodded sagely at the whispered remark.

Last night Lori had seen Decker the madman unmasked. Now she wanted to unmask him again. Strip away this facade of civilized concern. But how? If she stepped out of hiding and challenged him tried to begin to explain all that she’d seen and experienced in the last twenty four hours they’d be measuring her up for a strait-jacket before she’d taken a second breath.

He was the one in the well cut suit, with the doctorate and the friends in high places; he was the man, the voice of reason and analysis, while she a mere woman!—what credentials did she have?—lover of a lunatic and a sometime beast? Decker’s midnight face was quite secure.

There was a sudden eruption of shouts from inside the building. On an order from their chief the troopers outside levelled their weapons at the front door; the rest retired a few yards. Two cops, pistols aimed at someone inside, backed out of the door. A beat later, Boone, his hands cuffed in front of him, was pushed into the light. It near blinded him. He tried to turn from its brilliance, back into the shadows, but there were two armed men following, who pressed him forward.

There was no sign remaining of the creature Lori had seen him become, but there was ample reminder of his hunger. Blood glued his tee shirt to his chest, and spattered his face and arms.

There was some applause from the audience, uniformed and otherwise, at the sight of the killer chained. Decker joined it, nodding and smiling, as Boone was led away, head averted from the sun, and put into the back of one of the cars.

Lori watched the scene with so many feelings grappling for her attention. Relief that Boone had not been shot on sight, mingled with horror at what she now knew he was; rage at Decker’s performance, and disgust at those who were taken in by it.

So many masks. Was she the only one who had no secret life; no other self in marrow or mind? If not, then perhaps she had no place in this game of appearances—perhaps Boone and Decker were the true lovers here, swapping blows and faces but necessary to each other.

And she’d hugged this man, demanded he embrace her, put her lips to his face. She could never do that again, knowing what lay in wait behind his lips, behind his eyes. She could never kiss the beast.

So why did the thought make her heart hammer?

NOW OR NEVER

“That are you telling me? That there’s more of these people involved? Some kind of cult?”

Decker drew breath to deliver his warning about Midian over again. The troopers called their Chief everything but his name behind his back. Five minutes in his presence and Decker knew why, ten and he was plotting the man’s dismemberment. But not today. The day he needed Irwin Eigerman: and Eigerman, did he but know it, needed him. While daylight lasted Midian was vulnerable, but they had to be swift. It was already one o’clock. Nightfall might still be a good distance away, but so was Midian. To get a task force out there to uproot the place was the work of several hours, and every minute lost to argument was a minute lost to action.

“Beneath the cemetery,” Decker said, beginning again at the place he’d begun half an hour before.

Eigerman scarcely made a pretence of listening. His euphoria had increased in direct proportion to the number of bodies brought out of the Sweetgrass Inn, a count which presently stood at sixteen. He had hopes for more. The only human survivor was a year-old baby found in a tumble of blood-soaked sheets. He’d taken her out of the building himself, for the benefit of the cameras. Tomorrow the country would know his name.

None of this would have been possible without Decker’s tip off, of course, which was why he was humouring the man, though at this stage in proceedings, with interviewers and flashlights calling, he was damned if he was going to go after a few freaks who liked corpses for company, which was what Decker was suggesting he do.

He took out his comb and began to rake over his thinning crop, in the hope of fooling the cameras. He was no beauty, he knew. Should it ever slip his mind he had Annie to remind him. You look like a sow, she was fond of remarking, usually before bedtime on a Saturday night. But then people saw what they wanted to see. After today, he’d look like a hero.

“Are you listening?” Decker said.

“I hear you. There’s folks grave robbing. I hear you.”

“Not grave robbing. Not folks.”

“Freaks,” Eigerman said. “I seen ‘em.”

“Not the likes of these.”

“You’re not saying any of them were at the Sweetgrass are you?”

“No.”

“We’ve got the man responsible right here?”

“Yes.”

“Under lock and key.”

“Yes. But there are others in Midian.”

“Murderers?”

“Probably.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Just get some of your people out there.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“If I told you once I told you a dozen times.”

“So tell me again.”

“They have to be rounded up by daylight.”

“What are they? Some kind of bloodsuckers?” He chuckled to himself. “That what they are?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Decker replied.

“Well, in a manner of speaking I gotta tell you, it’s gonna have to wait. I got people want to interview me, doctor. Can’t leave them begging. It’s not polite.”

“Fuck polite. You’ve got deputies, haven’t you? Or is this a one cop town?”

Eigerman clearly bridled at this.

“I’ve got deputies.”

“Then may I suggest you dispatch some of them to Midian?”

“To do what?”

“Dig around.”

“That’s probably consecrated ground, mister,” Eigerman replied. “That’s holy.”

“What’s under it isn’t,” Decker replied, with a gravity that had Eigerman silenced. “You trusted me once, Irwin,” he said. “And you caught a killer. Trust me again. You have to turn Midian upside down.”

There had been terrors, yes, but the old imperatives remained the same: the body had to eat, had to sleep. After leaving the Sweetgrass Inn Lori satisfied the first of these, wandering the streets until she found a suitably anonymous and busy store, then buying a collection of instant gratification foods: doughnuts, custard filled and dutch apple, chocolate milk, cheese. Then she sat in the sun and ate, her numbed mind unable to think much beyond the simple business of biting, chewing and swallowing. The food made her so sleepy she couldn’t have denied her lids falling if she’d tried. When she woke her side of the street, which had been bathed in sunshine, was in shadow. The stone step was chilly, and her body ached. But the food and the rest, however primitive, had done her some good. Her thought processes were a little more in order. She had little cause for optimism, that was certain, but the situation had been bleaker when she’d first come through this town, on her way to find the spot where Boone had fallen. Then she’d believed the man she loved was dead; it had been a widow’s pilgrimage. Now at least he was alive, though God alone knew what horror, contracted in the tombs of Midian, possessed him. Given that fact, it was perhaps good that he was safe in the hands of the law, the slow process of which would give her time to think their problems through. Most urgent of those, a way to unmask Decker. No-one could kill so many without leaving some trace of evidence. Perhaps back at the restaurant, where he’d murdered Sheryl. She doubted he’d lead the police there as he’d led them to the Inn. It would seem too like complicity with the accused, knowing all the murder sites. He’d wait for the other corpse to be found by accident, knowing the crime would be ascribed to Boone. Which meant perhaps the site was untouched, and she might still find some clue that would incriminate him; or at very least open a crack in that pristine face of his.

Returning to where Sheryl had died, and where she’d endured Decker’s provocations, would be no picnic, but it was the only alternative to defeat she had.

She went quickly. By daylight, she had a hope of getting up the courage to step through that burnt-out door. By night it would be another matter.

Decker watched as Eigerman briefed his deputies, four men who shared with their Chief the looks of bullies made good.

“Now I trust our source,” he said magnanimously, throwing a look back at Decker, “and if he tells me something bad’s going down in Midian, then I think that’s worth listening to. I want you to dig around a little. See what you can see.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” one of the number wanted to know. His name was Pettine. A forty-year old with the wide, empty face of a comedian’s foil; and a voice too loud, and a belly too big.

“Anything weird,” Eigerman told him.

“Like people been messing with the dead?” the youngest of the four said.

“Could be, Tommy,” Eigerman said.

“It’s more than that,” Decker put in. “I believe Boone’s got friends in the cemetery.”

“A fuckwit like that has friends?” Pettine said. “Sure as shit wanna know what they look like.”

“Well you bring ‘em back, boys.”

“And if they won’t come?”

“What are you asking, Tommy?”

“Do we use force?”

“Do unto others, boy, before they do unto you.”

“They’re good men,” Eigerman told Decker, when the quartet had been dispatched. “If there’s anything to find there, they’ll find it.”

“Good enough.”

“I’m going to see the prisoner. You want to come?”

“I’ve seen as much of Boone as I ever want to see.”

“No problem,” Eigerman said, and left Decker to his calculations.

He’d almost elected to go with the troopers to Midian but there was too much work to do here preparing the ground for the revelations ahead. There would be revelations. Though so far Boone had declined to respond to even the simplest enquiries, he’d break his silence eventually, and when he did Decker would have questions asked of him. There was no chance any of Boone’s accusations could stick the man had been found with human meat in his mouth, bloodied from head to foot but there were elements of recent events that confounded even Decker, and until every variable in the scenario had been pinned down and understood he would fret.

What, for instance, had happened to Boone? How had the scapegoat filled with bullets and filed as dead become the ravening monster he’d almost lost his life to the night before? Boone had even claimed he was dead, for Christ’s sake and in the chill of the moment Decker had almost shared the psychosis. Now he saw more clearly. Eigerman was right. They were freaks, albeit stranger than the usual stuff. Things in defiance of nature, to be poked from under their stones and soaked in gasoline. He’d happily strike the match himself.

“Decker?”

He turned from his thoughts to find Eigerman closing the door on the babble of journalists outside. All trace of his former confidence had fled. He was sweating profusely.

“OK. What the fuck’s going on?”

“Do we have a problem, Irwin?”

“Shit alive, do we have a problem.”

“Boone?”

“Of course Boone.”

“What?”

“The doctors have just looked him over. That’s procedure.”

“And?”

“How many times did you shoot him? Three, four?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Well the bullets are still in him.”

“I’m not that surprised,” Decker said. “I told you we’re not dealing with ordinary people here. What are the doctors saying? He should be dead?”

“He is dead.”

“When?”

“I don’t mean lying down dead, shithead,” Eigerman said. “I mean sitting in my fucking cell dead. I mean his heart isn’t beating.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’ve got two fuckers telling me the man is walking dead, and inviting me to listen for myself. You wanna tell me about that, doctor?”

DELIRIUM

She stood across the street from the burnt out restaurant, and watched it for five minutes, to see if there was any sign of activity. There was none. Only now, in the full light of day, did she realize just how run down this neighbourhood was. Decker had chosen well. The chance of anyone having seen him enter or leave the place the night before was most likely zero. Even in the middle of the afternoon no pedestrian passed along the street in either direction, and the few vehicles that used the thoroughfare were speeding on their way to somewhere more promising. Something about the scene perhaps the heat of the sun, in contrast to Sheryl’s unmarked grave brought her solitary adventure in Midian back to her; or more particularly, her encounter with Babette. It wasn’t just her mind’s eye which conjured the girl. It seemed her whole body was reliving their first meeting. She could feel the weight of the beast she’d picked up from beneath the tree against her breast. Its laboured breathing was in her ears, its bitter sweetness pricked her nostrils.

The sensations came with such force they almost constituted a summoning: past jeopardy signalling present. She seemed to see the child looking up at her from her arms, though she’d never carried Babette in human form. The child’s mouth was opening and closing, forming an appeal Lori could not read from lips alone.

Then, like a cinema screen blanked out in mid movie, the images disappeared, and she was left with only one set of sensations: the street, the sun, the burnt out building ahead.

There was no purpose in putting off the evil moment any longer. She crossed the street, mounted the sidewalk, and without allowing herself to slow her step by a beat stepped through the carbonized door frame into the murk beyond. So quickly dark! So quickly cold! One step out of the sunlight, and she was in another world. Her pace slowed a little now, as she negotiated the maze of debris that lay between front door and the kitchen. Fixed clearly in her mind was her sole intention: to turn up some shred of evidence that would convict Decker. She had to keep all other thoughts at bay: revulsion, grief, fear. She had to be cool and calm. Play Decker’s game.

Girding herself, she stepped through the archway.

Not into the kitchen, however: into Midian.

She knew the moment it happened where she was the chill and the dark of the tombs was unmistakable. The kitchen had simply vanished: every tile.

Across the chamber from her stood Rachel, looking up at the roof, distress on her face. For a moment she glanced at Lori, registering no surprise at her presence. Then she returned to watching and listening.

“What’s wrong?” Lori said.

“Hush,” Rachel said sharply, then seemed to regret her harshness and opened her arms. “Come to me, child,” she said.

Child. So that was it. She wasn’t in Midian, she was in Babette, seeing with the child’s eyes. The memories she’d felt so strongly on the street had been a prelude to a union of minds.

“Is this real?” she said.

“Real?” Rachel whispered. “Of course it’s real…”

Her words faltered, and she looked at her daughter with enquiry on her face.

“Babette?” she said.

“No…” Lori replied.

“Babette. What have you done?”

She moved towards the child, who backed away from her. Her view through these stolen eyes brought a taste of the past back. Rachel seemed impossibly tall, her approach ungainly.

“What have you done?” she asked a second time.

“I’ve brought her,” the girl said. “To see.”

Rachel’s face became furious. She snatched at her daughter’s arm. But the child was too quick for her. Before she could be caught she’d scooted away, out of Rachel’s reach. Lori’s mind’s eye went with her, dizzied by the ride.

“Come back here,” Rachel whispered.

Babette ignored the instructions, and took to the tunnels, ducking round corner after corner with the ease of one who knew the labyrinth back to front. The route took runner and passenger off the main thoroughfares and into darker, narrower passages, until Babette was certain she was not being pursued. They had come to an opening in the wall, too small to allow adult passage. Babette clambered through, and into a space no larger than a refrigerator, and as cold, which was the child’s hideaway. Here she sat to draw breath, her sensitive eyes able to pierce the total darkness. Her few treasures were gathered around her. A doll made of grasses, and crowned with spring flowers; two bird skulls, a small collection of stones. For all her other ness Babette was in this like any child: sensitive, ritualistic. Here was her world. That she’d let Lori see it was no small compliment.

But she hadn’t brought Lori here simply to see her hoard. There were voices overhead, close enough to be heard clearly.

“Who-ee! Will you look at this shit? You could hide a fuckin’ army here.”

“Don’t say it, Cas.”

“Shittin’ your pants, Tommy?”

“Nope.”

“Sure smells like it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Shut up, the both of you. We’ve got work to do.”

“Where do we start?”

“We look for any signs of disturbance.”

“There’s people here. I feel ‘em. Decker was right.”

“So let’s get the fuckers out where we can see ‘em.”

“You mean… go down? I ain’t going down.”

“No need.”

“So how the fuck do we bring ‘em up, asshole?”

The reply wasn’t a word but a shot, ringing off stone.

“Be like shootin’ fish in a barrel,” somebody said. “If they won’t come up they can stay down there permanent.”

“Saves digging a grave!”

Who are these people! Lori thought. No sooner had she asked the question than Babette was up and clambering into a narrow duct that led off her playroom. It was barely large enough to accommodate her small body; a twinge of claustrophobia touched Lori. But there was compensation. Daylight up ahead, and the fragrance of the open air, which, warming Babette’s skin, warmed Lori too.

The passage was apparently some kind of drainage system. The child squirmed through an accumulation of debris, pausing only to turn over the corpse of a shrew that had died in the duct. The voices from over ground were distressingly close.

“I say we just start here and open up every damn tomb till we find something to take home.”

“Nothing here I wanna take home.”

“Shit, Pettine, I want prisoners. As many of the fuckers as we can get.”

“Shouldn’t we call in first?” a fourth speaker now asked. This dissenting voice had not so far been heard in the exchanges. “Maybe the Chief’s got fresh instructions for us.”

“Fuck the Chief,” Pettine said.

“Only if he says please,” came the response from Cas.

Amid the laughter that followed there were several other remarks exchanged, obscenities mostly. It was Pettine who silenced the hilarity.

“OK. Let’s get the fuck on with it.”

“Sooner the better,” said Cas. “Ready Tommy?”

“I’m always ready.”

The source of the light Babette was crawling towards now became apparent: a latticed grille in the side of the tunnel.

Keep out of the sun, Lori found herself thinking.

It’s all right, Babette’s thoughts replied. Clearly this wasn’t the first time she’d used the spy hole. Like a prisoner without hope of parole she took what entertainment she could find to ease the passage of time. Watching the world from here was one such distraction, and she’d chosen her vantage point well. The grille offered a view of the avenues but was so placed in the mausoleum wall that direct sunlight did not fall through it. Babette put her face close to the grille, to get a clearer grasp of the scene outside.

Lori could see three of the four speakers. All were in uniform; all despite their brave talk looked like men who could think of a dozen better places to be than this. Even in broad daylight, armed to the teeth and safe in the sun, they were ill at ease. It wasn’t difficult to guess why. Had they come to take prisoners from a tenement block there’d be none of the half glances and nervous tics on display here. But this was Death’s territory, and they felt like trespassers.

In any other circumstances she would have taken some delight in their discomfiture. But not here, not now. She knew what men afraid, and afraid of their fear were capable of.

They’ll find us, she heard Babette think.

Let’s hope not, her thoughts replied.

But they will, the child said. The Prophetic says so.

Who?

Babette’s answer was an image, of a creature Lori had glimpsed when she’d gone in pursuit of Boone in the tunnels: the beast with larval wounds, lying on a mattress in an empty cell. Now she glimpsed it in different circumstances, lifted up above the heads of a congregation by two Breed, down whose sweating arms the creature’s burning blood coursed. It was speaking, though she couldn’t hear its words. Prophecies, she presumed; and amongst them, this scene.

They’ll find us, and try to kill us all, the child thought.

And will they?

The child was silent.

Will they, Babette?

The Prophetic can’t see, because it’s one of those that’ll die. Maybe I’ll die too.

The thought had no voice, so came as pure feeling, a wave of sadness that Lori had no way to resist or heal.

One of the men, Lori now noticed, had sidled towards his colleague, and was surreptitiously pointing at a tomb to their right. Its door stood slightly ajar. There was movement within. Lori could see what was coming; so could the child. She felt a shudder run down Babette’s spine, felt her fingers curl around the lattice, gripping it in anticipation of the horror ahead. Suddenly the two men were at the tomb door, and kicking it wide. There was a cry from within, somebody fell. The lead cop was inside in seconds, followed by his partner, the din alerting the third and fourth to the tomb door.

“Out of the way!” the cop inside yelled. The trooper stepped back and with a grin of satisfaction on his face the arresting officer dragged his prisoner out of hiding, his colleague kicking from behind.

Lori caught only a glimpse of their victim, but quick-eyed Babette named him with a thought.

Ohnaka.

“On your knees, asshole,” the cop bringing up the rear demanded, and kicked the legs from under the prisoner. The man went down, bowing his head to keep the sun from breaching the defence of his wide brimmed hat.

“Good work, Gibbs,” Pettine grinned.

“So where’s the rest of them?” the youngest of the four, a skinny kid with a coxcomb, demanded.

“Underground, Tommy,” the fourth man announced. “That’s what Eigerman said.”

Gibbs closed in on Ohnaka.

“We’ll get fuckface to show us,” he said. He looked up at Tommy’s companion: a short, wide man. “You’re good with the questions, Cas.”

“Ain’t nobody ever said no to me,” the man replied. “True or false?”

“True,” said Gibbs.

“You want this man on your case?” Pettine asked Ohnaka. The prisoner said nothing.

“Don’t think he heard,” Gibbs said. “You ask him, Cas.”

“Sure enough.”

“Ask him hard.”

Cas approached Ohnaka, reaching down and snatching the brimmed hat from off his head. Instantly, Ohnaka began to scream.

“Shut the fuck up!” Cas yelled at him, kicking him in the belly. Ohnaka went on screaming, his arms crossed over his bald head to keep the sun off it as he clambered to his feet. Desperate for the succour of the dark he started back towards the open door, but young Tommy was already there to block his way.

“Good man, Tommy!” Pettine hollered. “Go get him Cas!”

Forced back into the sun, Ohnaka had begun to shudder as though a fit had seized him.

“What the fuck?” said Gibbs.

The prisoner’s arms no longer had the strength to protect his head. They fell to his sides, smoking, leaving Tommy to look straight into his face. The boy cop didn’t speak. He just took two stumbling steps backwards, dropping his rifle as he did so.

“What are you doin’, dickhead?” Pettine yelled. Then he reached and took hold of Ohnaka’s arm to prevent him claiming the dropped weapon. In the confusion of the moment it was difficult for Lori to see what happened next, but it seemed Ohnaka’s flesh gave way. There was a cry of disgust from Cas, and one of fury from Pettine as he pulled his hand away, dropping a fistful of fabric and dust.

“What the fuck!” Tommy shouted. “What the fuck! What the fuck!”

“Shut up!” Gibbs told him, but the boy had lost control. Over and over, the same question: “What the fuck?”

Unmoved by Tommy’s panic, Cas went in to beat Ohnaka back down to his knees. The blow he delivered did more than he intended. It broke Ohnaka’s arm at the elbow, and the limb fell off at Tommy’s feet. His shouts gave way to puking. Even Cas backed off, shaking his head in disbelief.

Ohnaka was past the point of no return. His legs buckled beneath him, his body growing frailer and frailer beneath the assault of the sun. But it was his face turned now towards Pettine that brought the loudest shouts, as the flesh dropped away and smoke rose from his eye sockets as though his brain were on fire.

He no longer howled. There was no strength in his body left for that. He simply sank to the ground, head thrown back as if to invite the sun’s speed, and have the agony over. Before he hit the paving some final stitch in his being snapped with a sound like a shot. His decaying remains flew apart in a burst of blood dust and bones.

Lori willed Babette to look away, as much for her own sake as that of the child. But she refused to avert her eyes. Even when the horror was over Ohnaka’s body spread in pieces across the avenue she still pressed her face to the grille, as if to know this death by sunlight in all its particulars. Nor could Lori look away while the child stared on. She shared every quiver in Babette’s limbs; tasted the tears she was holding back, so as not to let them cloud her vision. Ohnaka was dead, but his executioners were not finished with their business yet. While there was more to see the child kept watching.

Tommy was trying to wipe spattered puke from the front of his uniform. Pettine was kicking over a fragment of Ohnaka’s corpse; Cas was taking a cigarette from Gibbs’ breast pocket.

“Gimme a light, will you?” he said. Gibbs dug his trembling hand into his trouser pocket for matches, his eyes fixed on the smoking remains.

“Never saw nothin’ like that before,” Pettine said, almost casually.

“You shit yourself this time, Tommy?” Gibbs said.

“Fuck you,” came the reply. Tommy’s fair skin was flushed red. “Cas said we should have called the Chief,” he said. “He was right.”

“What the fuck does Eigerman know?” Pettine commented, and spat into the red dust at his feet.

“You see the face on that fucker?” Tommy said. “You see the way it looked at me? I was near dead, I tell you. He would have had me.”

“What’s going on here?” Cas said.

Gibbs had the answer almost right.

“Sunlight,” he replied. “I heard there’s diseases like that. It was the sun got him.”

“No way, man,” said Cas. “I never seen or heard of nothin’ like that.”

“Well we seen and heard it now,” said Pettine with more than a little satisfaction. “It weren’t no hallucination.”

“So what do we do?” Gibbs wanted to know. He was having difficulty getting the match in his shaking fingers to the cigarette between his lips.

“We look for more,” said Pettine, “and we keep looking.”

“I ain’t,” said Tommy. “I’m calling the fuckin’ Chief. We don’t know how many of these freaks there are. There could be hundreds. You said so yourself. Hide a fuckin’ army you said.”

“What are you so scared of?” Gibbs replied. “You saw what the sun did to it.”

“Yeah. And what happens when the sun goes down, fuckwit,” was Tommy’s retort.

The match flame burnt Gibbs’ fingers. He dropped it with a curse.

“I seen the movies,” Tommy said. “Things come out at night.”

Judging by the look on Gibbs’ face he’d seen the same movies.

“Maybe you should call up some help,” he said. “Just in case.”

Lori’s thoughts spoke hurriedly to the child.

You must warn Rachel. Tell her what we’ve seen.

They know already, came the child’s reply.

Tell them anyway. Forget me! Tell them, Babette, before it’s too late.

I don’t want to leave you.

I can’t help you Babette. I don’t belong with you. I’m—

She tried to prevent the thought coming, but it was too late.

—I’m normal. The sun won’t kill me the way it’ll kill you. I’m alive. I’m human. I don’t belong with you. She had no opportunity to qualify this hurried response. Contact was broken instantly the view from Babette’s eyes disappearing and Lori found herself standing on the threshold of the kitchen.

The sound of flies was loud in her head. Their buzzing was no echo of Midian, but the real thing. They were circling the room ahead of her. She knew all too well what scent had brought them here, egg-laden and hungry, and she knew with equal certainty that after all she’d seen in Midian she couldn’t bear to take another step towards the corpse on the floor. There was too much death in her world, inside her head and out. If she didn’t escape it she’d go mad. She had to get back into the open air, where she could breathe freely. Maybe find some unremarkable shop girl to talk to about the weather, about the price of sanitary towels; anything as long as it was banal, predictable.

But the flies wanted to buzz in her ears. She tried to swat them away. Still they came at her and at her, their wings buttered with death, their feet red with it.

“Let me alone,” she sobbed. But her excitement drew them in larger and still larger numbers, rising at the sound of her voice from their dining table out of sight behind the ovens. Her mind struggled to take hold of the reality she’d been thrown back into her body to turn and leave the kitchen.

Both failed, mind and body. The cloud of flies came at her, their numbers now so large they were a darkness unto themselves. Dimly she realized that such a multiplicity was impossible and that her mind was creating this terror in its confusion. But the thought was too far from her to keep the madness at bay; her reason reached for it, and reached, but the cloud was upon her now. She felt their feet on her arms and face, leaving trails of whatever they’d been dabbling in: Sheryl’s blood, Sheryl’s bile, Sheryl’s sweat and tears. There; were so many of them they could not all find flesh to occupy, so they began to force their way between her lips, and crawl up her nostrils and across her eyes.

Once, in a dream of Midian, hadn’t the dead come as dust, from all four corners of the world? And hadn’t she stood in the middle of the storm caressed, eroded and been happy to know that the dead were on the wind? Now came the companion dream: horror to the splendour of the first. A world of flies to match that world of dust—a world of incomprehension and blindness, of the dead without burial, and without a wind to carry them away. Only flies to feast on them, to lay in them and make more flies.

And matching dust against flies, she knew which she favoured, knew as consciousness went out of her completely, that if Midian died and she let it if Pettine and Gibbs and their friends dug up the Nightbreed’s refuge, then she, dust herself one day, and touched by Midian’s condition would have nowhere to be carried, and would belong, body and soul, to the flies.

Then she hit the tiles.

THE WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS

For Eigerman bright ideas and excretion were inextricably linked; he did all his best thinking with his trousers around his ankles. More than once, in his cups, he’d explained to any who’d listen that world peace and a cure for cancer could be achieved overnight if the wise and the good would just sit down and take a crap together.

Sober, the thought of sharing that most private of functions would have appalled him. The can was a place for solitary endeavour, where those weighed down by high office could snatch a little time to sit and meditate upon their burdens.

He studied the graffiti on the door in front of him. There was nothing new amongst the obscenities, which was reassuring. Just the same old itches, needing to be scratched. It gave him courage in the face of his problems.

Which were essentially twofold. First, he had a dead man in custody. That, like the graffiti, was an old story. But zombies belonged in the late movie, like sodomy on a lavatory wall. They had no place in the real world. Which brought him onto the second problem: the panicked call from Tommy Caan, reporting that something bad was going down in Midian. To those two, on reflection, he now added a third: Doctor Decker. He wore a fine suit, and he talked fine talk, but there was something unwholesome about him.

Eigerman hadn’t admitted the suspicion to himself until now, sitting on the crapper, but it was plain as his dick once he thought about it. The bastard knew more than he was telling: not just about Dead Man Boone, but about Midian and whatever was going on there. If he was setting Shere Neck’s finest up for a fall then there’d come a reckoning time, sure as shit, and he’d regret it.

Meanwhile the Chief had to make some decisions. He’d begun the day as a hero, leading the arrest of the Calgary Killer, but instinct told him events could very quickly get out of hand. There were so many imponderables in all of this; so many questions to which he had no answers. There was an easy way out, of course. He could call up his superiors in Edmonton and pass the whole fuck-up along to them to deal with. But if he gave away the problem he also gave the glory. The alternative was to act now before nightfall, Tommy had kept saying, and how far was that? three, four hours—to root out the abominations of Midian. If he succeeded he’d double his helping of accolades. In one day he’d not only have brought a human evil to justice but scoured the cess-pit in which it had found succour: an appealing notion.

But again the answered questions raised their heads, and they weren’t pretty. If the doctors who’d examined Boone and reports coming out of Midian were to be trusted then things he’d only heard in stories were true today. Did he really want to pit his wits against dead men who walked, and beasts that sunlight killed?

He sat, and crapped, and weighed up the alternatives. It took him half an hour, but he finally came to a decision. As usual, once the sweat was over, it looked very simple. Perhaps today the world was not quite the way it had been yesterday. Tomorrow, God willing, it would be its old self: dead men dead, and sodomy on the walls where it belonged. If he didn’t seize his chance to become a man of destiny there wouldn’t be another, at least not till he was too old to do more than tend his haemorrhoids. This was a God given opportunity to show his mettle. He couldn’t afford to ignore it. With new conviction in his gut he wiped his ass, hauled up his pants, flushed the crapper and went out to meet the challenge head-on.

“I want volunteers, Cormack, who’ll come out to Midian with me and get digging.”

“How soon do you need them?”

“Now. We don’t have much time. Start with the bars. Take Holliday with you.”

“What are we telling them it’s for?”

Eigerman mused on this a moment: what to tell.

“Say we’re looking for grave-robbers. That’ll get a sizeable turnout. Anyone with a gun and a shovel’s eligible. I want ‘em mustered in an hour. Less if you can do it.”

Decker smiled as Cormack went on his way.

“You happy now?” Eigerman said.

“I’m pleased to see you’ve taken my advice.”

“Your advice, shit.”

Decker just smiled.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Eigerman said. “I’ve got work to do. Come back when you’ve found yourself a gun.”

“I just might do that.”

Eigerman watched him leave, then picked up the phone. There was a number he’d been thinking about dialling since he’d made up his mind to go into Midian; a number he hadn’t had reason to call in a long time. He dialled it now. In seconds, Father Ashbery was on the line.

“You sound breathless, Father.”

Ashbery knew who his caller was without need prompting.

“Eigerman.”

“Got it in one. What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been out running.”

“Good idea. Sweat out the dirty thoughts.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you think I want? A priest.”

“I’ve done nothing.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“I’m not paying, Eigerman. God forgave me my sins.”

“Not in question.”

“So leave me alone.”

“Don’t hang up!”

Ashbery was quick to detect the sudden anxiety in Eigerman’s voice.

“Well, well,” he said.

“What?”

“You’ve got a problem.”

“Maybe both of us do.”

“Meaning?”

“I want you here real quick, with whatever you’ve got in the way of crucifixes and Holy Water.”

“What for?”

“Trust me.”

Ashbery laughed.

“I’m not at your beck and call any longer, Eigerman. I’ve got a flock to tend.”

“So do it for them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You preach the Day of Judgement, right? Well they’re warming up for it, over in Midian.”

“Who are?”

“I don’t know who and I don’t know why. All I know is, we need a little holiness on our side, and you’re the only priest I’ve got.”

“You’re on your own, Eigerman.”

“I don’t think you’re listening. I’m talking serious shit here.”

“I’m not playing any of your damn fool games.”

“I mean it, Ashbery. If you don’t come of your own accord, I’ll make you.”

“I burned the negatives, Eigerman. I’m a free man.”

“I kept copies.”

There was a silence from the Father. Then:

“You swore.”

“I lied,” came the reply.

“You’re a bastard, Eigerman.”

“And you wear lacy underwear. So how soon can you be here?”

Silence.

“Ashbery. I asked a question.”

“Give me an hour.”

“You’ve got forty-five minutes.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s what I like: a God-fearing lady.”

Must be the hot weather, Eigerman thought when he saw how many men Cormack and Holliday had rounded up in the space of sixty minutes. Hot weather always got folks itchy: for fornication maybe, or killing. And Shere Neck being what it was, and fornication not being so easy to get just whenever you wanted it, the hunger to do some shooting was well up today. There were twenty men gathered outside in the sun, and three or four women coming along for the ride; plus Ashbery and his Holy Water.

There’d been two more calls from Midian in that hour. One from Tommy, who was ordered back into the cemetery to help Pettine contain the enemy until reinforcements arrived, the second from Pettine himself, informing Eigerman that there’d been an escape bid made by one of Midian’s occupants. He’d slipped away through the main gate while accomplices create a diversion. The nature of this diversion not only explained Pettine’s choking as he delivered his report, but also why they’d failed to give chase. Somebody had ignited the tyres of the cars. The conflagration was quickly consuming the vehicles, including the radio upon which the report was being made. Pettine was in the process of explaining that there would be no further bulletins when the airwaves went dead.

Eigerman kept this information to himself, for fear it cooled anyone’s appetite for the adventure ahead. Killing was all very fine, but he wasn’t so sure there’d be quite so many ready to roll now if it was common knowledge that some of the bastards were ready to fight back.

As the convoy moved off he looked at his watch. They had maybe two and a half hours of good light left before dusk began to settle in. Three quarters of an hour to Midian, which left an hour and three quarters to get these fuckers dealt with before the enemy had night on its side. That was long enough, if they were organized about it. Best to treat it like a regular shakedown, Eigerman supposed. Drive the bastards out into the light and see what happened. If they came apart at the seams, the way piss pants Tommy had kept saying, then that was all the proof a Judge would need that these creatures were unholy as hell. If not if Decker was lying, Pettine on dope again, and all this a fool’s errand he’d find someone to shoot, so it wasn’t all a wasted journey. Might just turn around and put a bullet through the zombie in Cell Five; the man with no pulse and blood on his face.

Either way, he wouldn’t let the day end without tears.