Magic Time

Chapter Thirteen

NEW YORK

Big Eddie was cooking, and that was that.

Didn’t make no never mind if it was World War III or the biggest fuckup Municipal or the Man Upstairs had ever pulled. Nothing he could do about it. He’d just left that fucking Metro bus of his on Forty-second and Sixth where it had up and died, come home and hauled the barbecue right out onto the street. Now he stood like some black Moses in a chef’s hat and apron, keeping the coals red hot and dishing out the good stuff.

He’d started the ball rolling by grilling whatever was thawing in his own freezer. Pretty soon folks from next door and down the block and around the corner were popping up with armfuls of burgers and dogs and chicken from their own kitchens. Better to cook it up than let it just rot. And some cats had gotten out their conga drums and saxophones and acoustic guitars, and it was sounding fine. Folks were scared shitless, hell yes, but it was also a damn good party. And not just the folks from the neighborhood: anyone could play; this was New York City. Big Eddie saw Asian dudes in pinstripe suits, a couple of them Orthodox guys, some Italian chicks still clutching their shopping bags from Bloomie’s and Bergdorf ’s. All mixing with the local talent, the brothers and sisters, Puerto Ricans and Vietnamese and just plain white guys. Everybody keeping it cool, right here, right now.

“That smells damn good.” The voice behind him was a gutter rasp that made Wolfman Jack sound like a soprano. Big Eddie turned to see a long, lean figure hugging the shadows between two buildings.

“Tastes better than it smells,” Big Eddie said. “So whyn’t you just come on up and get yourself some?”

Unsteadily, the figure emerged from the shadows into the mellow light cast by the paper lanterns donated by the corner sushi bar. Eddie could see the guy was even taller than he, better than six and a half feet, a white guy with a dark complexion and really bad skin, wild black hair, and Ray-bans hiding his eyes. His black suit-looked like it had been expensive once-was torn to shit.

“Man, what happened to you?”

“Dunno,” Stern said vaguely. “I’m all turned round.”

Even through the smoke curling up redolent of meat and juices, Big Eddie’s nostrils caught the tang of the dude’s odor, some funky dinosaur smell or weird shit.

“Well, lemme get you set up here.” Big Eddie heaped chicken wings and a burger, some potatoes and corn on a paper plate, held it out to him. The dude’s hands had been jammed in his pockets, but now he had to pull one out to reach for the plate. Light fell across it, caught the glint of a white-gold wristwatch. Eddie saw long, rough-ridged nails and a hand all blotchy and bubbly, like it was erupting from within.

Big Eddie yanked back his hand, dropping the plate. “Geez, man, you’re sick! What the hell you got?”

“I don’t know,” Stern said with absent neutrality. Man, the dude was trippin’.

“Well, keep your distance. You go over there, I’ll slide something to you.”

Stern tilted his head, regarding Big Eddie, and an insolence bloomed on his face that made him at once seem more together and formidable. “I don’t take orders.”

“You wanna eat, you better start.” Big Eddie kept his eyes on the other man, not backing down, as he assembled another plate.

“Friend,” Stern said, and there was no friendship in it, “you can kiss your tip good-bye.” With a sweep of one big arm, he sent the barbecue tumbling, meat and spuds and cobs all flying, red-hot coals spilling out. Big Eddie yelped and fell back, swatting the burning stuff away.

“Motherfucker!” Now others were coming on the run, yelling at the crazy sick asshole. “What the fuck is your problem?” More and more of them, surging together, tattoos and silk ties and brow studs and Versace, moving fast. “Mess him up, mess that fucker up!” Stern lurched away, broke into a run, sunglasses flying off his face.

And they were after him.

Sam Lungo heard the mob coming from behind his lace curtains and heavy oak door, screaming their trash talk, their obscenities.

It had been a frightful evening, jumping at every creak of the old house, every distant crash and yell. The anguish and fury of the night had shrieked outside like a storm, shuddering windows and doors. Huddled in the dark, he had witnessed Patel’s being smashed and torn apart, seen the wild ones descend on that mounted policeman in all their hunger and fear.

He had felt the briefest stirrings of sympathy, a fretful impulse toward action, but then Patel’s had always gouged, their prices twenty, thirty cents higher than any supermarket. And as for that policeman, well, the police never did a thing when you called them, never did their job.

Then Cal Griffin and that dykey girl from down the street had appeared, driven the mob off. Sam had watched, silent and still, as they had helped the bulky old cop to his feet, murmuring like his own caring children, obviously solicitous, though Sam couldn’t hear the words.

Sam’s heart had pounded so fiercely then that he feared it would burst his chest, be launched through the glass to land wetly at their feet, longing, longing. .

To have someone care about him, to have a protector, to be seen and heard and known, not an outsider or pariah, excluded from all confidences and joys.

The shouts and footfalls were louder now. Sam pressed his nose to the glass, squinting at the darkness. They were still around the corner but coming closer, and fast. The first one appeared, a huge, bony man in a tattered suit, gasping, stumbling, clearly frightened. Why, he was being chased.

The first of his pursuers emerged behind him, rounding the corner, a big fat man with a baseball bat. The one in the suit turned on him just as Fat Boy swung the bat at his head. Incredibly, Torn Suit caught the bat in his hands, snapped it in two-crack-and cast the pieces aside.

Now it was Fat Boy’s turn to be scared. He backed as Torn Suit advanced on him. Torn Suit grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt, then threw him. Fat Boy flew a good twenty feet, bounced off a wall and sprawled in the gutter.

The other voices were loud now; any moment they’d be here. Torn Suit spun about, looking for escape, a way out.

Sam threw open his door. “This way! Quick!” Torn Suit didn’t hesitate. Several bounding steps took him across the street and into Sam’s house. Sam quickly shut the door, careful not to slam it. He motioned the other deeper into the room, away from the windows, then hunkered by the glass, careful not to be seen from outside.

The pack of wild ones was on the block now, a smorgasbord of surly, flushed faces. They crushed flowerbeds, knocked aside trash cans. Slowing only a bit, a few helped Fat Boy (who wasn’t dead, surprisingly) to his feet, evaporated down the street.

Sam waited a moment to make sure they were gone, then turned to his visitor. Torn Suit was little more than a silhouette in the black room, massive and still, his head tilted to one side as though evaluating him.

Sam had kept the room dark so as not to draw attention. Now he lit one of Mother’s oil lamps; thank heavens she’d saved them.

But then she had saved everything.

The wick caught, and yellow light flared up, casting its glow over his guest. Sam let out a sound that was a little like a laugh and a lot like getting punched in the stomach.

Torn Suit was magnificently ugly, beautiful really, face all crags and angles and rough, leathery patches. No, not leather. . he recalled the cast he’d once seen of a tyrannosaur’s skin, with its ordered rows of ridges and bumps, so powerful and impervious. And the eyes that peered down at him, they gleamed like the twenty-dollar gold pieces Mother had shown him when he was little, the ones he’d never been able to find after she died.

“My,” Sam said softly, “what are you?”

Numbly, Torn Suit searched in a breast pocket, handed him a card. Ely Stern, it said, Lawyer.

“Oh,” Sam muttered. “Of course.”

Stern regarded Sam with a bemused expression. “Why’d you help me?” His voice sounded like a tuba lined with sandpaper; it raised the hairs on Sam’s neck.

Slowly, Sam approached, stretched out tentative fingertips to touch Stern’s sleeve, feel the hard muscle beneath.

“I need someone strong,” he said.

Sam had been a boy when Mother had bought the intricately carved Art Nouveau bookcase. It had taken three big men, sweating like pigs, to wrestle it into the house and against the wall.

But Stern lifted it off the floor where it had fallen and replaced it as easily as if it were cardboard.

“Holy cow,” Sam giggled.

“I play racquetball Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Stern murmured. He still seemed about one sandwich short of a picnic, but he was coming around. His pyrite gaze washed over the velvet and scrollwork furniture, the heavy wood bureaus and the dolls. Mostly the dolls. Sam had put them all back in place, as Mother would have insisted. Miraculously, not one had broken. They lined the tops of chaise longues and etageres, massed every surface in their pinafores and sausage curls, bisque cheeks and glass eyes, the Gaultiers and Brus and Jumeaus.

“What’s with the dolls?” Stern asked.

Sam grimaced as if ashes were on his tongue. “My mother. My late mother. She left me all this.”

Stern’s eyes glinted off the silent audience staring out like children’s corpses, like contemptuously amused ghosts. “She must have been bent.”

Sam barked a laugh; and in the heavy, airless room it reverberated off the walls and furniture. “Don’t get me started.”

Stern grinned at him, a horrible, exhilarating grin wider than any human mouth should have been, teeth curved and razored like a shark’s.

“You got anything around here to eat?” he said.

“Jeez, what I’d give for some WD-40,” Colleen said, and Cal had to agree. The front wheel on the shopping cart was wailing like the unquiet dead.

They had turned onto Tenth now, only five more blocks to Roosevelt Emergency. He had expected the wide avenue to be packed, but they’d seen few people, mostly wary souls who walked fast and gave them a wide berth, plus a scattering of grim men guarding shops and restaurants with handguns and rifles.

The front wheels of the cart hit a hole, and Tina gave a small moan.

“It’s okay, baby,” Cal said, not slowing. He reached down and stroked her shoulder. She seemed barely aware of him. In the moonlight, her face had a blue sheen. She was breathing in ragged gasps, struggling for each breath. Cal gripped the bar of the cart tighter and increased his speed as much as he could. The pavement in the street would have been smoother but there wasn’t room to get the cart between the stilled cars.

Colleen kept pace alongside, her long, easy strides matching his, the big wrench held loosely, an extension of her arm. He saw she was watching him. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You’re just not what I’m used to.” And what might that be? Trouble with my love life, she had said outside the Stark building, and she’d been in no hurry to get home since she’d descended on that punk with her handy cudgel.

“So what’s with you and elevators?” he asked, trying to make it sound light, to speak of anything other than the breathless dread he felt, to cover the heartrending rasps from the huddled figure in the cart, mindful of the street, the air, the night.

“Dad was a grease monkey in the military; guess it got into my blood.” She scanned the shadows ahead. “Heart got him when I was fifteen. Ma and I didn’t exactly see eye to eye, so I packed up my tools soon as I could, hopped a bus east.”

“And never looked back,” Cal added. He was working hard to avoid the ruts in the pavement, but the front wheels twisted with almost willful contrariness. He kept up the pace, urgent, headlong, his legs aching from the forced quick-march. He found he was holding the metal bar with a white-knuckle tension that sent pain shooting up both forearms. He loosened his grip, just a little, and the discomfort eased.

“Well, you study history,” Colleen’s voice mingled with the night breeze, “you might just have to learn something from it.” Her face clouded. Then she said, “So what’s your story? Where’re your folks?”

For a moment, Cal considered evading, painting some Brady Bunch scenario to be spared the recital of the gory details. Then he nodded toward Tina. “Dad ran off when she was born. And when she was four, Mom. . got killed.”

He braced for the pitying gasp, the familiar questions. But all she said was, “How old were you?”

“Eighteen. But I wasn’t gonna let anybody split us up. I got myself declared her guardian, had everyone swear I was responsible.”

Colleen’s eyes slid over again to appraise him. “They were right.”

No, they weren’t. I became a fucking lawyer and left her till all hours with nannies and au pairs and all sorts of faux parents who weren’t-

Colleen shot up a warning hand. He stopped short, brought the cart to silence. She was peering into the darkness ahead, listening keenly. Now Cal heard it, too, a shuffling of many feet, a scurrying. And something more, murmuring voices that sounded predatory, expectant.

Cal pressed down on the bar, lifting the squeaking front wheel off the asphalt, keeping it mute. He crab-walked the cart behind an overflowing dumpster, out of sight. Mercifully, Tina was quiet, eyes shut. He and Colleen crouched down.

Small, huddled figures appeared in the intersection, moving quickly along Sixty-second, speaking in soft, eager tones, whispering and chuckling like naughty children.

Children? Their silhouetted heads seemed abnormally large, their arms too long. Their clothes flapped loosely, bunched and oversize, and they moved with a strange, lithe step. Cal caught the glint of what looked like a rifle barrel, held straight up, in their midst. Then they were gone.

Cautiously, Colleen emerged, stepped to the cross street to make sure. A moment later she waved Cal forward. He eased the cart out, drew up by her. Her eyes mirrored his own thoughts, betraying incredulity and-something he hadn’t seen before in her-fear.

Cal tried to reassure himself they were just people, fleetingly glimpsed, misperceived. But something deep in his gut belied that. His sense of events stirring, of the world altering, grew stronger, more insistent. This darkness, this silence, wasn’t just some outage, some one-shot event, to be righted tomorrow.

This was tomorrow.

Colleen was still peering down Sixty-second, wary and uncertain. “Come on,” Cal said. With an effort she tore her attention away, and they continued down Tenth.

Cal tried to lose himself in forward motion, enveloped in the terrible rhythm of his sister’s tortured breath. But the image of those huddled dark shapes, moving so swiftly, so purposefully, would not be banished. In his mind, it became all of a piece somehow: the malformed, twisted ones speeding on their errand; the dream of darkness, of blood and the sword, the multitudes crying for him to act; the homeless madman warning of the catastrophe to come, which did come; Stern, muted and deflated, crumpled on his office floor, so like Tina in that fevered flatness, now that he thought of it.

And that punk in the T-shirt, reaching for the gun.

Unreality seized him. It was as if the dream had not ended, merely transformed, and he was snared in it, changing.

Tina moaned again, snapping him back to the moment. He murmured reassurance, then glanced at Colleen, prowling silent alongside, certain again in action.

“Colleen,” Cal began, still on the move. “Yeah?”

“When you hit that guy holding the gun on me… did you see anything?”

“Red.”

“No, I mean,” he searched for words. “I thought I saw. . something.”

“Like what?”

“Like-” he hesitated and noticed that Colleen had stopped in her tracks, was staring ahead in astonishment.

He followed her gaze and saw them, in the hundreds, men and women all jostling, pressing forward, struggling to get into the great, dark building as desperately outnumbered figures in lab coats, scrubs and a scattering of security uniforms strove to keep them back.

They had reached the hospital.

A steak a day, cooked rare, Mother had demanded for both of them. Blood to feed the blood.

But what do you do when the electricity cuts out and six months’ worth of prime cut is turning to a soggy mess in the freezer? You let it go, that’s what you do, and you attend to your guest. My guest. When had he ever used that phrase, when had he had call to? Never.

Sam bustled back into the dining room, hefting the platter with its great hunk of meat. Stern sat at the table, immense and dark and incongruous before the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins, the silver.

“Got a whole freezer of these,” Sam said. “Just be ruined if the power doesn’t come back on.” He set the heavy plate on the table. “I’m not sure how we can cook-”

Savagely, Stern snatched the meat and downed it in a single, vast inhalation. Sam yelped in surprise, took a step back, almost falling.

Stern’s eyes fixed on him, and, for a terrible moment, Sam felt like a rabbit caught in the searchlight glare of a wolf. Seeing it, Stern chuckled, and his eyes lost some of their edge. He held the platter out with one sharp-nailed hand. His dagger teeth caught the lamplight as he intoned, dragon’s voice attempting a childish falsetto, “Please, sir… may I have some more?”

Blood was in the air, and things worse than blood. The hospital was suffocating, bedlam in the crowded, narrow corridors lit by candles and whatever else the hospital staff had scrounged up. Cal even spied a menorah casting its glimmering light on the triage teams bent over forms on gurneys.

Cal had cautioned Colleen to stay outside with Tina while he ventured into the labyrinthine building in search of aid. But gaining the ear of a doctor or nurse was impossible; each rushing medic was besieged by supplicants, deafened by pleas. Initially, they had tried to quarantine those who seemed infected by this strange new disease or diseases. But the masses had soon overwhelmed them, and all systems had broken down, replaced by a frantic improvisation.

The wounded and ailing sat or stood wherever they could, some rocking, some moaning, others silent and numb. One boy of ten or so lay cradled in his mother’s arms, his hair half-fallen out, eyes huge and vacant as he chanted television listings in an endless drone. From the woman Cal learned that there were many cases of odd fevers, inexplicable pains, alarming growths beneath the skin, as well as those directly injured by fire and quake. And not anyone here to tend them or explain.

Cal thought of Tina, out in the cart, fever consuming her like kindling. Panic swirled about him, and he felt his own panic rising to meet it. She’s slipping away from me, she’s slipping away, and there’s nothing I can do.

No. I won’t accept that. He fought his immobility, bulled through the crowds, collared a blank-eyed, wispy internist named Marquette, forced his attention. Keeping a grip on the man’s arm, Cal barked out Tina’s symptoms, demanded advice, treatment.

But Marquette began gabbling about what happened when the quake had hit, the emergency generators and backup batteries failing. Operating rooms had turned into hell-black chambers of horrors, with not even the light from flatline monitors to show the gaping cavities of the suddenly stilled bodies on the tables. Every operating room had been in use, with teams frantically, hopelessly trying to keep hearts and lungs going.

Not to mention the nightmares in the ICU and the incubator room off Maternity. .

Screams had echoed down the corridors long before the newly maimed and diseased had descended on them.

“You want advice?” Marquette finished shrilly. “Take her home.” He tore free of Cal’s grasp and plunged into the mob, was swallowed up.

Cal stood silent, alone amid the mayhem and noise, the families crouched with their wasted, broken ones. His eyes stung, and he found he had to will every breath. He summoned calm, focused on a single thought.

I’ve got to get her a doctor.

Somewhere in this fucking city, there had to be someone.

But every doctor would be under siege, unreachable. It would be exactly the same as here.

Unless somehow he were unknown. Unless-

Unless his degree wasn’t worth toilet paper.

Doc. Who had fled Russia, abandoned his practice. Who joked about atherosclerosis and heart attacks as he dished out franks and praline-covered coconut. I don’t even know where he lives.

But I know where he works.

If he’s there. At this hour. .

On the first night after the end of the world? He just might be.

Cal found Colleen near the alley that led to the delivery entrance, away from the crowd. Beside her, Tina was a tight-curled knot in the cart, blanket thrown off, eyes half open. She made no response as Cal approached.

“It’s hopeless in there,” he said and looked down at his sister. “Tina?”

Colleen touched his arm. “She can’t hear you. Fever’s got her.”

Cal ran his fingers through Tina’s matted hair, along the blazing smooth brow. “There’s someone I know, a little. He used to be a doctor. I think maybe he’ll help, if he can, if I can find him.”

He cast a desperate glance at Tina, remembering the endless trudge from Eighty-first. It took so long to get her anywhere, and she was burning, fading away even as he watched.

“I’ll stay with her,” Colleen said. He hesitated. “It’s okay. We’ll be safe. We’ll wait over there.” She gestured across the street.

“Over there” was a concrete playground. Cal spied flares and torches, hustling dark forms, some in uniforms, erecting tents and uncrating supplies.

“National Guard,” said Colleen. “Started setting up while you were inside. It’s for folks whose buildings got wrecked or who can’t hack the climb, whatever.”

She closed the gap between them. “We’ll be here when you get back. Get a move on.” He nodded and turned away, caught his stride, leaving them behind. The night air filled his lungs.

It felt good to run.

Toward the end, Stern had gotten a little daintier. He was no longer swallowing the bones.

They lay heaped on the platter before him, between the German porcelain candelabra. He held the last, teeth scraping the final bit of meat from it. Then he tossed it on the pile and belched. “There goes my cholesterol.”

Across from him, Sam perched on his chair’s edge, fascinated. The freezer was empty now, but what did that matter? “You remind me of Hoss on Bonanza. He liked to eat. And no one messed with him.”

Stern nodded solemnly, regarded his strange dark hands with their stiletto nails. “No one messes with the big guy…”

“That’s right!” Sam bounced to his feet. “They respect power. They respect what can hurt them.”

The oil lamp behind Stern had died, and Sam stepped into its pool of shadow. “I remember the blackout in ’65,” he said, voice high and fast. “This dark that just went on and on, and no one to tell you what was right or wrong except you. I remember thinking, What if this just goes on forever? But then the next day came, and it ended.”

He strode to face Stern, peered at his craggy face. “But this is different, isn’t it, Ely? I mean, there’s you, for instance. Blackout wouldn’t explain you.”

Stern scowled, looked beyond Sam at the blackness, at nothing. “My therapist, those slugs on the street, they thought I was sick. I’m not sick.” He stretched expansively, rippling muscle visible where coat seams had burst. “I’m becoming.”

“Becoming what?” Sam asked, reverent, enchanted. Wanting, himself, to become. To become anything.

Stern rose like a tower. “I’ll know when I get there.”

Sam timidly reached up, nearly to the length of his arm, and daubed a linen napkin on Stern’s mouth. “You got a little. . blood on your lip.” God, he was magnificent, and terrible.

“Thanks.” Stern turned from him, striding out of the dining room toward the living room, the door. He was leaving.

“Wait! Wait!” Sam overtook him in the front room, blocked his way. “You go out there, it will be just the same, everywhere. They’ll chase you, hunt you down. They never appreciate what’s different, what’s special. I know.” The words cascaded out, pleading. “We can help each other. You can stay here. I can keep you safe, hidden, get you food.”

Stern cocked his head, eyed him with a lawyer’s caginess. “And what’s your percentage?”

Sam’s heart thrilled. As a child, he’d seen The Thief of Baghdad and for years after had fantasized about having its huge, forbidding genie at his command, to do his bidding. What is thy wish, O my master?

Sam plunged a hand into his pocket, withdrew the dog-eared notepad, one of so many, with their hundreds and thousands of notations, all the days and weeks and years of outrage and insult.

“There’s some people I’d like you to meet. .,” he said.

Cal found himself swimming against a tide of humanity, every cross street hopelessly clogged with folks making their way toward Central Park, drawn by the glare of the huge propane lamps of the National Guard encampment there.

Cal darted into an alleyway behind some restaurants. It reeked of rotted vegetables, spoiled meat, but mercifully there was no one in sight. He dodged spilled trash cans, leaped over rubbish, picking up speed.

“Yo, Ginsu!” The voice echoed off cold brick. “Where’s your girlfriend?” The alley was pitch dark, but there was no mistaking the haircut in the reflected candleglow from a window above, the shirt with its grinning death’s head.

Cal slowed as Misfits swaggered toward him. “Get a load of this,” he said. He extended a hand.

The trash at Cal’s feet quivered, whipped about as in a sharp wind, and Cal felt himself gripped hard, pulled by a powerful suction. He struggled, but there was no fighting it. It swept him up, hurled him toward the open hand, which caught him by the throat, squeezed tight.

Misfits bared ragged, nicotine-stained teeth in a delighted grin. “Magnet Man, just like with the gun. Didn’t know I could do it till tonight. Been wastin’ my time in vocational school.” He winced. “Man, my ribs hurt.”

He raised the police automatic, held it an inch from Cal’s face. “Am I glad to see you,” he said.