Second Horseman Out of Eden

16

In moments we had reached the base of Eden, which was a wall of concrete five feet high. We crouched in the darkness, just below the eerie green, chemically or solar-cell produced light that seeped out of the translucent plastic dome that covered the vast expanse of the biosphere.

"How are you holding up?" Garth asked.

"Okay. You?"

"Okay. Decision time."

"I know. If this thing was built to the same scale and design as the model I saw, we should be just outside the desert region. The living quarters will be in the first arm, which is a good way up. Where do we go in?"

"What do you say, Mongo?"

I thought about it, said: "It's too risky to try to break right into the living quarters. Hell, we could end up falling in through Tanker Thompson's window and into his lap, which is grief we don't need. Besides, I doubt that the transmitter is anywhere in the living quarters section, or Thompson would have known where it was. If the transmitter is someplace else, then it doesn't make any difference where we break in and start looking, because one place is as good as another. I say we go in here, and check out the terrain as we make our way toward the living quarters."

"Agreed," Garth said, and swung the fire extinguisher full force at the plastic material that rose from the concrete wall.

The steel cylinder struck the plastic and rebounded like a tumbler on a trampoline, almost pulling Garth off his feet.

"Shit," I said. "That's reinforced Plexiglas. It's going to be a bitch to break."

Garth took a deep breath, gripped the handle of the fire extinguisher with both hands, and swung again-with the same results. I grabbed his wrist, looked at his watch: it was 11:11.

"Come on," I said, tugging at my brother's sleeve. "We don't have time for this. We're going to have to look for the front door.''

"No," Garth replied curtly as he took McCloskey's automatic out of his pocket and slipped off the safety catch. "We could waste time looking, make just as much noise going in there as here, and possibly warn them. Let me see if I can't weaken the shield with a bullet or two."

Garth fired two bullets, spaced closely together, into the Plexiglas. I knew that the thickness of the shield would undoubtedly muffle the sound, but I still winced each time the gun went off. Again he smashed the steel cylinder into the plastic, just below the two holes; and again. A slight crack had appeared, but the material still held firm.

His watch read 11:13.

Garth raised his gun again, but I grabbed his arm and shoved Frank Palorino's revolver at him. "Here, use two from mine. We don't have any spare ammunition, and neither one of us can afford to have an empty gun."

Garth nodded, pocketed his automatic, and used the revolver to fire two more shots into the Plexiglas, just below the first two. Then he banged the end of the fire extinguisher into the center of the rectangle formed by the four holes. The material cracked further-and parted. Three more whacks, and there was a hole big enough for a man to crawl through.

"Up, up, and away," Garth said, crouching slightly and cupping his hands together at the level of his knees.

I tucked the revolver, which Garth had given back to me, in the waistband of my jeans, took two steps backward, then ran forward, jumped, and planted my right foot in Garth's cupped hands. He gave me a moderate heave, and I sailed head first through the opening in the Plexiglas, prepared for the shock of landing on what I assumed would be hard-packed sand.

Wrong.

So much for relying on scale models, I thought as I landed in foul-smelling muck that almost immediately closed over my head as it began sucking me down. I fought against the slime, struggling to right myself, and finally felt my feet touch bottom. I stood up, found myself in blackish-brown mire that came up to my shoulders, gagged when I sucked in a breath. It seemed I had landed in the swamp-which was virtually a cesspool.

Something was definitely rotten in Eden; or it was Eden itself that was rotting. Blaisdel, Peter Patton and Company had missed an equation somewhere.

I checked my waistband to make certain the revolver was still there. It was-not that it was going to be much use, except maybe as a club; the firing mechanism would be hopelessly fouled with the lumpy slime.

"Watch out!" I called through cupped hands, shuddering as I felt-or imagined I felt-something large, cold, and slimy slither across my back. "Forget the floor plan! It's a fucking swamp!"

Garth's head and shoulders appeared above me in the opening. He looked down at me, frowned. "You all right?"

"I'm all right, but my gun has to be fouled. Watch out for yours."

Garth nodded, then raised the automatic over his head and jumped into the mire beside me. Taller, and with more leverage, Garth was able to wade more easily through the muck, and I didn't object when he grabbed my arm and dragged me after him across the surface toward higher ground seventy-five yards or so away.

Blaisdel and his people had dreamed of building themselves the ultimate greenhouse, I thought as I gazed into the distance, and my first impression was that they'd wound up with the ultimate shithouse. I wondered how the people living there could stand it. The fetid air hanging over the swamp could not be that much better anywhere else in the biosphere; it was humid and cloying, and felt like wet wool in the lungs. The "sky" above Eden-the same sickly, dim green glow we had seen outside-was, I presumed, supposed to give some psychological satisfaction so that Eden's inhabitants would not be depressed by utter darkness in the absence of the sun, moon, and stars; I would have preferred darkness. It was hot-too hot-and I suspected that the inevitable greenhouse effect induced by the coated Plexiglas was considerably greater than the designers had anticipated, and would eventually become unbearable. Eden was no place to hang out during any Tribulation; Eden itself was a tribulation.

Perhaps a half mile away, the "sky" seemed to lighten and ripple slightly, and I suspected this might be a reflection from Eden's "ocean." Unless the whole biosphere had been redesigned, the living quarters would be in a separate arm or wing constructed on higher ground near the shore of the ocean.

Further in the distance, barely visible, there was what appeared to be a heavy mist hanging like a diaphanous curtain from the ceiling to the ground. That would be the rain forest.

Somewhere in this vast, artificial, rotting world a machine was ticking away, preparing to send a signal that would trigger explosions that would kill tens of millions of people. Eden, indeed. Leaders like Blaisdel, William Kenecky, and Peter Patton, abetted by followers like Tanker Thompson, the Small brothers, Hector Velazian, Billy Dale Rokan, and Craig Valley, had always suffered their patently insane obsessions and superstitions, along with a desperate need to inflict their obsessions and superstitions on everyone else. I had always believed that at the bottom of every political and religious zealot's heart was a death wish. They were, in every sense of the word, enemies of humanity, creators of hell on earth, infecting generation after generation down through the centuries, their lineage of paranoia, hatred, and terrorism going all the way back to the dawn of humankind's tenure on earth. Henry Blaisdel and William Kenecky had presumed to go to the head of the class, and Garth and I had only minutes left to stop them.

We reached the edge of the swamp, scrambled up a bank of mushy ground that rose at a sharp angle, squatted down on the crest of a hill, and looked around us. The transmitter was obviously not in the swamp area we had just come through, and the light was too dim for us to see anything but large, general features on the ground. There was no time to search randomly through the biosphere, which meant that we were going to need help-and we needed it right away. Covered with slime, we began to jog at a fairly good clip in the direction of the living quarters. There were a number of filthy streams draining into the swamp; most we could jump over, but one we had to ford. Garth took care to hold his automatic high over his head, keeping it dry.

As we ran, we constantly scanned our surroundings; there was no sign of anything that resembled a transmitter.

The ground gradually rose and became firmer as we approached the area where the light above us was paler and shimmering. And then we reached the shore of the "ocean"-a sizable expanse of water that was perhaps a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and about as long. Here the air was even heavier, and sweat ran in thick rivulets down our bodies as we gasped for breath. We took only moments to try to catch our breath, then headed along a narrow pathway by the retaining wall, toward a soaring archway that-we hoped-would be the entrance to the arm containing the group's living quarters.

At the edge of the arch we stopped, bent over double, and struggled to suck air into our lungs.

"What time is it?" I gasped.

"What difference does it make?" my brother replied, shaking his head. "Let's go."

We stepped around the edge of the archway and, keeping low, sprinted twenty yards to the edge of an orchard of sere, withering trees with remnants of fruit on them that was, like everything else in Eden, rotting; here, too, the air was tainted, sickly sweet. We hurried through the orchard, stopped when we came to the edge of a wide dirt road that ran the length of the area. Across the road were a number of cottages, all a uniform color that might once have been white, but was now gray.

In front of the cottage almost directly across from us was a red tricycle.

We could have only a few minutes left.

Millions of people. .

And in, on, Eden, at any moment, bombs would start to fall. .

But there was nothing to do but keep going.

Again keeping low, we sprinted across the road and into the shadows between two cabins, pressed up against the side of the cabin with the red tricycle in front of it. Once again we were gasping for air in the tainted atmosphere of Eden.

As we crossed the road I had caught a glimpse of Eden's place of worship-a church, or an obscene parody of a church, with a gray-white gabled front and a twisted swastika for a cross. The sight of the structure, placed here as it had been in the model, gave me a perverse sense of hope.

Houses of worship were the places where worshipers placed effigies of their gods, and the only real god these people worshiped was death.

"Did you … see … the church?"

Garth nodded, and from the expression on his face I could tell that he was thinking the same thoughts I was: the bombs would have to start falling at any moment. Indeed, I could hardly believe that the bombing run had not begun already. The alternative-that the planes had not been able to get into the air, and that at that very moment a radio signal was being sent that could ignite nuclear holocausts-was almost unthinkable.

I continued, "Do you suppose the transmitter could be in there?"

"I'm going to check it out."

"I'll go with you."

"No. At least you may be able to save the girl. You try to find her, then get her to someplace safe, if you can."

"Garth-"

"There's no time to argue, Mongo. Go get the child-and be safe."

And then he was gone, his running, mud-covered figure disappearing into the darkness of the shadows surrounding the cottages as he headed toward the swastika-crowned church down the road.

I sidled along the edge of the house, darted around the corner, went up the single step, and tried the front door. It was open. I eased myself into the darkened living room, quietly closed the door behind me until only a sliver of light was coming through, then looked around-and started.

Across the room, on a table set next to a half-closed door from which flickering candlelight emanated, the luminous dial of a clock radio glowed.

It was 10:10 in Idaho, Mountain Time.

In New York, the new year had already begun.

Mr. Lippitt's planes were too late.

Unless the radio transmitter was keyed to Mountain Time, and Lippitt had somehow found that out. But how could he?

All moot questions, I thought as I moved to the doorway, mud-filled revolver in my hand. I paused to clean some of the slime off the metal, hoping to make it at least look threatening, then peered around the edge of the door.

In the center of the room a young couple was kneeling in front of a small, makeshift altar on which a swastika-cross was flanked by two crimson candles. Both the man and woman were dressed in hooded white terry-cloth robes. I put the gun back in the waistband of my jeans, next to my spine, then stepped into the room.

"Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Brown," I said quietly. "I have to talk to you."

Both the man and woman whipped their head and shoulders around. They were young, fresh-faced, and attractive, probably in their mid-twenties. The man had close-cropped brown hair, and the woman's hair was a reddish-blond. Their eyes were filled with shock, fear, and alarm.

"Who are you?!" the man shouted as he leaped to his feet. "What are you?!"

"My name is Robert Fred-"

"Demon!" the man screamed as he leaped at me. "You're a demon!"

So much for the easygoing approach. I hit him in the stomach as he reached down for me, then followed up with the barrel of my gun against the side of his head. He went down, and stayed down.

"Mrs. Brown," I said quickly, "please listen to me! If I meant harm, I could have killed your husband just now. But I didn't. I didn't even hit him that hard; he'll be all right. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want you to listen to me."

I paused, put the gun back in my waistband and smiled tentatively-but the woman's almost childlike face remained frozen in shock and horror that I felt almost as a physical blow. She was, I realized, thoroughly terrified of me-not because I was a mud-covered intruder who had startled her, or even because I had cold-cocked her husband with a very large and nasty-looking gun.

The woman was speechless with horror because she believed me to be a demon.

"I'm just a man, Mrs. Brown," I continued in a quiet voice that I hoped she would find soothing. "You are Mrs. Brown, aren't you? Vicky's mother?"

"You're one of them," the green-eyed woman said in a weak, quavering voice. Then she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and raised her arms in supplication. "Oh, Jesus, please take me to you now. Please take me now."

"Mrs. Brown, your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus. The letter was mailed in New York City by Thomas Thompson, and my brother and I wound up with it because of a certain Christmas tradition that's followed in New York. I'm no demon; I'm a private investigator who just happens to be a dwarf, and right now my brother and I are trying to save a few lives. Did you know that your daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus a few weeks ago?"

The woman stopped her mumbling, lowered her head, opened her eyes, and stared at me. Then, for my efforts, I got a tentative nod.

"Did you read it?" I continued.

She shook her head.

"Your daughter was being sexually abused by William Kenecky. He was raping her, and he was doing it frequently. Did you know that?"

The green eyes clouded, and the color drained from the woman's face. "What. .? What are you saying?"

"All right, you didn't know. Kenecky was molesting Vicky, Mrs. Brown-raping her, and worse. She was afraid to tell either you or your husband because Kenecky had her convinced that she wouldn't go to heaven with you if she did."

"It's a lie," the woman breathed. "Reverend Kenecky has gone on ahead, so he's not here to confront you. What you say can't be true."

"Mrs. Brown, just how do you think Reverend Kenecky 'went on ahead,' as you put it?"

"God took him in a blinding flash of light. Mr. Thompson told us about it. Reverend Kenecky was Raptured ahead of all the others. It's a very great honor."

"Thompson killed him, Mrs. Brown. He killed him because he knew Kenecky was a child raper, and because he thought that by killing Kenecky he could keep my brother and me from finding this place-which, by the way, doesn't seem to have worked out so well. The air here smells poisonous."

The woman slowly, reluctantly, nodded. "Eden is wrong; it was not meant to be. I don't understand why the reverend said we should be here. If we are not to be Raptured, then it must mean that we were meant to die, to go to God now to wait for the end of the Tribulation. You're right when you say that Eden is poisoned. It is another sign. We do not want to suffer at the hands of the demons, so we're all going to God in a little while."

"Huh?"

"Please let us be."

"What do you mean, you're 'going to God in a little while'? Who's going to God?"

"All of us. It's been agreed that we should all die by our own hands. It doesn't make any difference, because we'll all be resurrected when Jesus comes to establish His kingdom on earth. That's only seven years away. In the meantime, God will take us to His bosom and we will be spared the agonies of the Tribulation."

"You're all going to commit suicide?"

The woman's silence was her answer. A chill went through me, and I shuddered.

"Are you going to kill Vicky, too?"

The woman tilted her head slightly and stared at me. She seemed genuinely puzzled. "Of course," she said at last.

"Do you think I would leave my own daughter behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation, to be torn by the claws of demons? Armageddon is about to begin."

"Please listen to me very carefully, Mrs. Brown. Armageddon could begin in a little while-not because God or Jesus wants it, but because Kenecky and a man by the name of Henry Blaisdel wanted it. There are hydrogen bombs, and-"

"It's God's will. All but white, born-again Christians will be sent to hell anyway. What difference does it make if kikes, niggers, and mud people die now or later?"

Hearing the words from the young, attractive, innocent-looking woman shook me, and I involuntarily took a step backward. I wondered if she sensed how afraid I was of her, of the poison in her mind that had, in a few short years, corroded her rationality and morality.

"I'm no demon, Mrs. Brown," I said, struggling to keep my voice even. "There aren't any demons outside now, and there aren't going to be any demons outside after midnight. What there's going to be is a whole lot of death and destruction if we don't stop what's been set in motion. But we are going to stop it. You know about the radio transmitter, and you know where it is; if you don't, your husband does, because he's been looking after the place. One of you is going to tell me where it is, and then we're going to shut it down. Then we'll see if we can't talk some sense into the rest of the people in here. If you kill yourself, it will be for nothing. Armageddon isn't coming, Mrs. Brown; just a new year."

"Lie," she hissed, and suddenly hatred glinted in her green eyes. "You are a demon! Satan sent you!"

"Lady, those hydrogen bombs aren't going to go off in any event, because this place is going to be leveled to the ground before the signal is sent. So let's do us all a favor and-"

"Demon!" she screamed. It was her last intelligible word, as she suddenly threw her head back again and began to babble at the top of her lungs. Saliva flew from her lips, dripped down her chin.

There'd already been a good deal too much shouting, as far as I was concerned, and the woman's sudden, very loud fit of glossolalia wasn't helpful to either my nerves or the situation. "Sorry, ma'am," I said as I stepped quickly across the room and clipped her on the chin. The speaking in tongues stopped, and she collapsed to the floor.

I went back into the other room, walked over to the clock radio, which now read 10:50; I reached out with a trembling hand, turned it on.

The radio was tuned to a country radio station, which was playing a Hank Williams tune. I slowly turned the dial, got light classical music, a talk show, a New Year's Eve party, a news report on local weather conditions.

It was almost one in the morning in New York, but the bombs had not exploded-yet; it had to mean that the transmitter was set to Mountain Time. We still had a little more than an hour. I heaved a deep sigh of relief, shut the radio off.

Where the hell was Garth?

But I didn't have time to worry about my brother, and I didn't think it was a good strategy to follow in his footsteps. I had to assume that he was taking care of business. While it was true that the transmitter might be somewhere in the church, and while there was always the possibility that Garth had been captured, I didn't think I should go there until I had explored other possibilities. Eden was a big place.

I was going to have to have a serious talk with Vicky Brown's father.

Suddenly a hot flush spread over my body, and I felt faint. Sweat popped out on my forehead, rolled down my face. My vision blurred. Just what I needed.

There was a small bathroom off the living room. I went into it and splashed cold water over my face. Then I took out the bottle of green pills. I shook one out, started to put it in my mouth, then thought better of it. I was very sick, to be sure, and feverish once again. I was probably hanging by my toenails over the edge of exhaustion-but I remembered the reaction I had suffered earlier, and I didn't want to risk having that happen to me again; if I passed out at any time in the next hour, I could well wake up in a world that had been forever changed, one with a few million fewer people in it and clouds of deadly radiation circling the planet. I tossed the pill in the toilet.

I pulled down the shower curtain and grabbed a towel, intending to use the items to bind the couple and gag the woman before I had my chat with Mr. Brown. I walked into the other room, stopped abruptly when I saw the child, dressed in a white terry-cloth robe like her parents, standing at the bottom of the staircase, which I assumed led to her upstairs bedroom. Considering all the commotion, I supposed it was surprising she hadn't come down before, and I knew I was lucky someone hadn't come to investigate.

The girl, rubbing her knuckles into eyes that were puffy with sleep, was staring at her parents on the floor, perhaps thinking that they were asleep. She was a beautiful child, with the same light, Nordic features as her parents. When she took her hands away from her eyes I could see that they were a pale blue. As I watched her I felt my boundless rage at the dead William Kenecky rekindled. I wondered how much damage, physically and emotionally, he'd done to her, and if it could ever be repaired.

"Vicky?" I said softly.

The child looked at me, then back at her parents-and perhaps saw the blood trickling from the gash I'd put into her father's left temple. She looked at me again, and her cherubic features twisted with anger at the same time as tears welled in her eyes.

"What have you done to my mommy and daddy?!" she screamed, and then came running across the room, tiny fists raised in the air. She reached me, began pounding my chest and face. "You hurt my mommy and daddy! You're a demon! I won't let you hurt my mommy and daddy anymore! Go away and leave us alone, you demon!"

As the tiny fists flailed at me I felt tears well in my own eyes; I was struck by the incredible courage of this child who would attack a demon with her bare hands in order to protect her mother and father. I decided that she'd survive her trauma at the hands and penis of William Kenecky-and possibly, with some good professional help, the poisonous spiritual growth undoubtedly already growing in her mind from seeds planted by her parents and the other lunatics she'd been living around might be uprooted.

"Vicky, listen to me," I said in an urgent whisper as I reached through the pounding fists, gently grasped the child, and pulled her to me. "Shhh. I've come from Santa."

"You're a demon!" she shouted as she pulled her hands free and began to pound at my head again.

"No. I'm one of Santa's helpers. Look at me. Don't I look like one of Santa's helpers?"

That got her attention; she stopped pounding, carefully looked me up and down. "You're all dirty," she announced. "And you smell terrible."

"That's because I fell in the mud on my way here. You have to listen to me, Vicky, and don't shout anymore. Santa got your letter asking for a puppy and telling him how Reverend Bill was hurting you and doing other bad things. Santa has a puppy for you, but it was even more important to him to make sure you weren't hurt any more. Santa can't stand it when children are hurt, and so he sent me to make things right for you."

Vicky Brown's tiny brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown, and there seemed to be a newfound-if tentative-respect in her pale blue eyes. "You really are one of Santa's helpers?" she said in a small voice. "It's the truth?"

"Santa's helpers never lie," I answered, and cast a quick glance over at the girl's parents. They were both beginning to stir, and that didn't bode well; I thought it might be a little difficult to explain to the girl why one of Santa's helpers had been bashing her parents around. "Can't you see that I'm an elf?"

"What's your name?" she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Mr. Mongo. I'm one of Santa's helpers who takes care of heavy duty. . uh, Santa sends me out to take care of people who hurt little girls and boys. I'm his toughest helper."

Mr. Brown moaned, then fell silent again. Mrs. Brown, however, was starting to come around. One leg twitched, and she started to raise her head.

"You sure you're not a demon?"

"Yes, Vicky. Uh, why don't you go into the bathroom and spla-"

"How come you have on pink sneakers?" she asked in an accusatory tone as she pointed a tiny finger at my unusual footgear, which the streams I'd waded through on my way from the swamp had washed clean. I decided that her interrogation techniques were as good as, probably better than, Malachy McCloskey's. "Elves don't wear pink sneakers. They wear shoes with pointy toes."

"Only the elves who make toys in Santa's workshop wear shoes with pointy toes," I said tightly, keeping my eye on the woman, who was now pushing herself up from the floor with her hands, shaking her head. The child's back was to her parents, but in another few seconds I was going to have to make some kind of move, and it looked like it was going to have to be an unpleasant one. "Tough elves like me who are sent out to help little girls wear pink sneakers."

"I have to go to the bathroom, Mr. Mongo."

Ah. "You go right ahead, Vicky. I'll be right here when you come back. We'll talk about your puppy."

She'd no sooner stepped into the other room than I was across the floor. I stepped in front of the woman, once again clipped her on the chin-this time more gently, using the heel of my hand. I caught her head, eased it down to the floor, put the towel under it. Then I checked the man's pulse and breathing. I'd apparently hit him harder than I'd intended, but I decided that he'd be all right as soon as he slept a little longer.

Next I checked on the clock radio in the other room. It read 11:05. I returned to the unconscious couple, made a show of covering the woman with an afghan from a sofa set against the wall. The child had become the key, and I couldn't rush.

The child, still looking sleepy, entered the room. Now apparently trusting me completely, she came over to where I knelt beside her mother, wrapped her arms around my neck, and rested her head on my chest.

"What's wrong with Mommy and Daddy, Mr. Mongo?"

"I … I had to make them go to sleep, Vicky."

"Why?"

"For two reasons, Vicky. First, they might not understand that I have to find something and shut it off before it hurts other little girls and boys like you. Second, because they might want to hurt themselves-and you-if I didn't make them go to sleep."

"Why would Mommy and Daddy want to hurt me, Mr. Mongo?"

"They wouldn't know they were hurting you. They believe wrong things. They believe they have to take themselves and you off to God. That's wrong. If God wants you, He'll take you in His own good time."

"We're all supposed to go to God in a little while, Mr. Mongo. There are going to be demons all around outside. We were supposed to stay here until Jesus came down to drive away all the demons and take care of us, but now everything here smells like poo-poo. Mr. Thompson says it's a sign that we're supposed to go to God now, before the demons come. He's made us stuff to drink that will make us sleep while God takes us."

"Vicky, do you like Mr. Thompson?"

She made a small grimace. "I guess he's all right, but he looks real funny now that he doesn't have any ears. Some demon hurt him and took away his ears. Now he kind of scares me sometimes, and I know he scares my mommy and daddy. When he came around here and told us we have to drink that stuff, Mommy and Daddy tried to argue with him. He made them be quiet. I think he scared them."

"Vicky, Mr. Thompson is wrong. He believes wrong things about what God wants. Santa knows what God wants, and Santa doesn't want you or anyone else to drink that stuff and go to sleep like Mr. Thompson wants you to. If you do, you'll never wake up again, and then you won't be able to play with your puppy. That's why Santa sent me here to stop Mr. Thompson from doing those bad things. Do you believe me, Vicky?"

Her answer was a small nod of her head.

"I have to tie your parents up, Vicky, but it will only be for a little while. It's so they won't hurt themselves or try to stop me. After I find what I'm looking for, we'll come back and untie them. Okay?"

She thought about it, finally nodded. "Okay, Mr. Mongo. But please don't tie them too tight."

"I won't. Is there any rope in the house, Vicky?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"It's okay," I said, quickly getting to my feet, hurrying across the room, and sticking my head around the door to glance at the clock radio.

11:19.

I went back, quickly rolled the shower curtain lengthways, and started to tie the man's hands. "Vicky," I said tentatively, feeling the breath catch in my throat, "your father's been working here at Eden for a long time, hasn't he? He takes care of things, right?"

"Yes. But it's not his fault that things here smell like poo. He told me that they weren't building it right, and that they were putting too many people in here."

"Did he ever take you around Eden with him?"

"Oh, yes," she said, and smiled. "He used to take me with him all the time, and he let me help him take care of things. It was a lot of fun before everything started to smell like poo."

"Do you know what a radio transmitter is?"

She shook her head, and I swallowed a grunt of frustration as I tried to think how to describe something when I didn't even know what it looked like.

I continued, "Did your daddy ever talk about a machine, or anything, that was going to send everybody to God just before the demons came?"

"You mean the thing that's going to kill all the niggers, kikes, mud people, and burnoose-heads?"

"Where is it, Vicky?"

"Across the ocean, up on the shore just before the place where the jungle begins. Daddy never did anything to it. He told me it takes care of itself, and that it's all set. But he used to show it to me. It's going to help Jesus when He comes to fight the demons."

"How can we get to it, Vicky?"

"We can get there in a cart by going around the ocean, but it's more fun to go across in a boat."

"Where do they keep the carts, Vicky?"

"They're parked down by-" The girl suddenly stopped speaking, and her eyes suddenly went wide as she looked at something behind me. "What are you going to do with that ax, Mr. Thompson?"

I pushed Vicky to one side, then leaped away just as the heavy head of a fire ax buried itself with a loud thunk into the floor on the spot where I had been kneeling a moment before. Tanker Thompson cursed loudly as he struggled to free the ax head.

First I threw a pillow from the sofa at him, because it was the only thing at hand. He didn't seem even to notice as it bounced off his face. But he noticed when I threw a side kick into his left thigh, just above the spot where I had pumped a bullet into his leg. The seemingly indestructible giant screamed, grabbed with both hands at his thigh, and began hopping around on his right foot. I hopped after him, drawing my revolver and aiming it directly at the hole on the right side of his head where one of his ears had been before he'd pulled it off. I pulled the trigger; just as I feared, I was rewarded for my efforts with nothing more than a dull click. As he roared with pain and rage and reached for me, I ducked under his arms and brought the end of the barrel up hard into his groin.

His roar went up two or three octaves, and his torso came down. I brought the butt of the gun down with all the strength I could muster onto the top of his shaved head, and that sent him crashing to the floor.

From past experience, I estimated that it would take me at least a week to beat Tanker Thompson to death, and I had neither the inclination nor the time to hang around to see if he was going to stay on the floor. "Let's go, Vicky!" I shouted, grabbing the child's hand and pulling her after me out of the room.

We ran through the living room, and out the front door. When Vicky tripped, I swept her up in my arms and carried her, staggering drunkenly as I tried to run on legs that felt like rotten rubber. Sweat was pouring into my eyes, blinding me. Gasping for breath, I weaved my way down the center of the road back the way we had come, toward the shores of Eden's ocean.

I suffered two serious stumbles, but I managed to catch myself each time before I fell with the child in my arms. After what seemed an eternity of breathlessness and pain, I reached the shore of the ocean-which, now that I looked closer in the shimmering, pale green light, appeared to be covered with lumps of what looked suspiciously like unprocessed human excrement. I set Vicky down, looked up and down the shoreline. Twenty-five yards to my right, barely visible in the eerie chemical glow, were a rowboat and a kayak with portals for two people. In the distance, in what seemed to me at least a lifetime away across the ocean, the green, misty mass of the rain forest rose up, filling the entire end of the dome.

And I was about to pass out. I reached into my pocket with a violently shaking hand, took out the bottle of pills. I shook one out, popped it in my mouth, and swallowed it.

"He's coming, Mr. Mongo!" Vicky screamed.

I spun around and was astonished to see Tanker Thompson, blood running down over his bruise-colored face, hobbling up the road toward us, dragging his left leg along behind him. He was holding the fire ax firmly in his hands, occasionally using it as a crutch.

Although the amphetamine certainly couldn't have had time to work its way into my bloodstream, the sight of the ax-wielding Tanker Thompson making his way up the road had a near-miraculous effect on my nervous system and energy level. It was motivational. Vicky ran on ahead of me as, pumping my arms and gasping in the fetid air, I managed to shuffle along at a pretty good pace across the feces-covered sand to the boats. There was a two-bladed paddle next to the kayak. I gave the rowboat a shove with my foot, sending it out into the water, then sat Vicky down in the front portal of the kayak. I slid into the back, pushed against the sand with my paddle, and we glided out over the greenish-brown water.

I grabbed the two-bladed paddle in the center, with my hands about two feet apart, then began paddling, stroking first on one side, then the other. I tried to concentrate on keeping my pace steady, for it seemed an impossibly long distance across the polluted body of water, and I knew I was very near the edge of my energy reserves. I'd needed the pill, because I'd been close to collapsing, but now I was having a reaction. I wasn't having the near-hallucinations I'd experienced before, but it felt like there was a ball of fire in my stomach-and the ball was gradually growing hotter as it expanded, sending tongues of flame throughout the rest of my body. I didn't like the sensation at all.

"Vicky," I said to the child in a stranger's voice that shocked me with its raw hoarseness. "You have to point out to me where we have to go."

"I. . I'm not sure, Mr. Mongo. Daddy never took me over there when it was dark like this."

"Do the best you can, sweetheart. We have to land as close to the machine as possible."

Vicky hesitated, then pointed off to the right at a forty-five-degree angle. "I think it's over there, Mr. Mongo."

I stroked twice, hard, on my left, waited while the nose of the kayak swung around to the desired direction, then resumed my steady windmill paddling, trying to concentrate on taking deep, steady breaths. The air was growing even fouler as we crossed the water toward the far shore with its infernal machine, and the rain forest beyond.

"He's coming, Mr. Mongo!" Vicky cried out in a small, frightened voice as she pointed back over my shoulder.

Although I knew it would disrupt my rhythm, fear made me stop paddling and glance back behind me. I wished I hadn't. We were perhaps a quarter of the way across Eden's ocean; yet, despite the fact that Tanker Thompson had to be suffering a giant headache, and despite the fact that he'd had to wade or swim out into the water to retrieve the rowboat, he was no more than twenty-five or thirty yards behind me. Like the monsters of nightmares that keep coming at you, he was rowing the boat with steady, powerful strokes generated by his bulk and the bulging muscles in his broad back and thick arms. Even with his back to me, I could see that he was covered with offal from the fouled waters; he glistened in the pale green light like some giant slug turned into human form.

As I stared back at him, momentarily paralyzed with horror, he slowed his pace slightly, turned around, and met my gaze. He was close enough so that I could clearly see his features; his small eyes were filled with hate, and his lips were twisted in a grimace of fierce determination. The main outrider of the second horseman out of Eden was threatening to ride me down-or sink me. I wondered if he still had his fire ax with him.

I wondered what time it was, and if it was going to make any difference.

And then Tanker Thompson turned back, leaned far forward, dipped his oars in the water, and gave a mighty pull. His boat seemed to surge through the water; with that one pull, it seemed to me that he had almost halved the distance between us.

His performance was tremendously inspiring to me.

"Are we still heading in the right direction, Vicky?!" I shouted as I turned my head forward and began to paddle furiously.

"That way a little, Mr. Mongo!" she shouted back, pointing a few more degrees to the right. "Please don't let him catch us! I'm scared!"

Me too. Escaping from Tanker Thompson had become a moot point. He was definitely going to catch us-or at least me; I was resigned to the fact that I was a dead man, even though I didn't much care for the idea. The only question that remained was whether I was going to be able to wreck the transmitter before Tanker Thompson wrecked me.

And I had to find a way to save Vicky Brown. The child Garth and I had pledged to help must not die.

"Vicky! Is there a way to get out of Eden on the other side?!"

"No, Mr. Mongo!"

Pull! Pull! Pull!

"How do you get out?!"

"There's a door back there behind the church! But it's locked to keep the demons out!"

Pull! Pull! Pull!

"Vicky!" Pull! Pull! "The moment we reach the shore, you must jump out and run away just as fast as you can! Don't look back! Just run! Run into the jungle and hide! Try to get as close to the wall as you can and curl up into a ball! Bombs are going to be falling on this place, but you'll be all right if you stay close to the wall! Then nice men will come and find you! Do you understand?!"

"What about my mommy and daddy?!"

I tried to think of something reassuring to say to the little girl, but I had no more lies left in me, and precious little wind. "I hope they'll be all right, too. By now, your mommy and daddy will be with the others."

"But they could be hurt by the bombs."

"I'm. . sorry, Vicky."

The girl began to cry, but I could think of nothing else to say. The fire that had started in my belly was now blazing in my arms and thighs, and I noted with alarm that it was burning away much of my remaining strength and resolve. There was a terrible temptation simply to stop paddling, lean forward, and wait for Tanker Thompson to come up and split my head open. I wondered if my heart would rupture when the fire in me reached it, but I tried to put that thought out of my mind.

Pull! Pull! Pull!

Pull! Pull! Pull!

There seemed no point in trying to see what progress I was making, and no point at all in looking behind, and so I screwed my eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, then opened them to slits and concentrated only on trying to keep the kayak pointed in the right direction. The only point was somehow to keep going. I tried not to think of the pain and fire in me, and tried to find solace in the fact that Tanker Thompson, despite his seemingly superhuman endurance and tolerance for pain, also had to be hurting; if I could suddenly collapse with a heart attack, or simply run out of gas and pass out, then-damn it-so could he.

I hoped. I certainly had to admit that Tanker Thompson was the closest thing to a flesh and blood demon I had ever come across, a terrifying creature that kept popping up, back, from death by freezing, bludgeoning, and bullets like some malevolent jack-in-the-box from hell.

That's the kind of thinking an oxygen-starved brain will give you, I mused, and might have smiled if I'd had the energy.

In any case, I just didn't think Tanker Thompson was going to do me any favors by having a heart attack or passing out. Just as I was operating far over the edge, discovering reserves of energy and determination inside myself I wouldn't have imagined I had, because I was driven by the need to save one child in particular and millions of people in general, so, too, was Thompson operating far over his edge, driven by his equally fervent desire-implanted, he fully believed, by God-to see this child and those millions of people die.

Pull! Pull! Pull!

I knew I was now in danger of completely losing it; the fire in me had spread up to my neck, down to my toes, and my head felt like it was ready to explode. I was breathing in a series of small, tortured gasps, and my windpipe felt like it would seize up and close at any moment.

Pull! Pull! Pull!

Desperately, I tried to concentrate on images of scorched earth, flattened buildings, craters in the ground-and bodies; millions of bodies. That was what was going to happen if I couldn't reach and destroy the transmitter.

I wondered what time it was.

Pull! Pull. .

A universe of pain, a world without air, heart and lungs that felt ready to burst at any moment. I tried to recall what I was doing, why I was suffering, where I was going, and what it was I was supposed to do when I got there.

Pull. .

Somewhere, sometime soon, something horrible was going to happen unless. .

Unless. .

"Mr. Mongo, wake up! Wake up!"

Oh-oh. I snapped awake to find myself slumped forward in the portal of the kayak. My hands were empty, the paddle having slipped from my fingers. I was wondering how long I'd been out, then realized that it could only have been seconds; I could see the paddle ten yards or so to my right, just beginning to float out of sight.

"Mr. Mongo-!"

I spun around and looked up just in time to see Tanker Thompson rear up in the prow of the rowboat, fire ax raised over his head. .

And then the prow of the kayak bumped the shore at the same time as the fire ax came swinging down, narrowly missing my head, crushing the stern of the kayak. I rolled to my left, out of the portal and into the water, put my feet down and touched bottom. I plucked Vicky out of the front portal, staggered up on the shore, and set her down.

A metal structure perhaps three feet high, enclosed in what looked like an inverted test tube with an enormous aerial atop it, rose out of the sand perhaps twenty yards up a slope, slightly to my left, clearly visible in the green light of the artificial world.

"Run, Vicky!" I shouted hoarsely as I struggled up the slope that suddenly seemed as steep as Mount Everest, feet plowing in the dirty sand. "Run!"

"Wo!" Tanker Thompson's deep voice, equally hoarse, boomed from behind me. "Don't you dare run away, Vicky! You belong to your parents and to God, not this man!"

To my horror, Vicky Brown, clearly terrified, suddenly stopped at the crest of the slope, beside the transmitter, and slowly turned back. Her small body was trembling all over.

I glanced over my shoulder, saw that Tanker Thompson was out of the water and onto the shore-but he was obviously hurting pretty good, too. Dragging his injured leg behind him, leaning on the fire ax, he lurched forward, then stumbled, did a pirouette, and fell on his face. I turned back to the child, struggled to yell, but could no longer make any sounds come out of my swollen throat. I mouthed the words.

Run! You'll be killed!

But the child remained frozen in place. In the ghostly light, her tiny body was framed by a soaring, greenish-black mass that almost seemed to be flowing behind her. What remained of the rain forest was clearly now nothing but melting biomass rotting and running down to accelerate the pollution of Eden.

Behind me, Tanker Thompson was using the handle of the fire ax to haul himself to his feet.

Once again able to suck air into my lungs after my brief rest stop, I resumed my labored struggle up the side of the slope. I reached the top, grabbed the revolver from the waistband of my jeans, and used the butt of the ruined weapon to smash the glass case over the transmitter. I tore wires from the terminals of the huge storage batteries powering it, then smashed the butt against the transmitter itself-once, twice, three times. The LED lights on a panel in front went out. I grabbed the antenna and snapped it off before slumping to the ground, quite thoroughly exhausted. I raised my head, still more than mildly curious to see what kind of progress Tanker Thompson was making.

I estimated that I had about six feet of life left-the distance between Thompson and his fire ax and me. And then even that was gone as he loomed over me, his earless, blood-covered skull appearing decidedly otherworldly as he stared down at me with his raisin eyes that now seemed virtually lifeless.

"… Over," I croaked. "It's over. Please. . please don't kill the girl."

"I won't kill her," Thompson mumbled through lips that I could now see were covered with froth. "She will go to God with her parents, as God wants her to."

"No … no sense. No. ."

He staggered slightly, then planted his feet wider apart and used both hands to lift the ax over his head. The ax head simply kept arcing backward as his hands released their grip on the handle. A bullet hole had appeared in his temple, just above a ragged piece of flesh that had once been his ear. Still, he didn't go down. Even with a bullet in his brain, he continued to stagger around like some grotesque chicken. He finally collapsed when a second shot rang out, and his right earhole widened.

I wearily turned my head to the right, the direction the shots had come from, to see who my savior might be, and was not at all surprised to see my brother, standing in a green-striped golf cart, slowly lowering his automatic to his side.

The meanest Santa's helper of all.

Garth stuck the automatic into his back pocket, climbed out of the golf cart, and walked steadily but unhurriedly toward us. On his face, in his soft brown eyes, was an expression of incredible gentleness, and I could see tears running down his cheeks. He was looking at Vicky, and when I glanced into the face of the child standing beside me I saw that she was staring back at him with open joy, as if he were a favorite uncle she had known all her life. As he approached, she unhesitatingly ran to him, arms extended, and Garth swept her up in his arms and held her tight.

"It's all right now, Vicky," Garth murmured in her ear. "It's all right."

"Uh. . dear brother of mine?"

Slowly, one of Garth's hands came down and rested itself gently on my shoulder. "You do good work, Mongo," he said softly, in a voice choked with emotion.

"So do you," I replied, grabbing the hand and pulling myself to my feet. I was quite amazed that I was able to stand; I was still reflecting on my amazing recuperative powers when my legs gave out under me and I sat down hard on the sand. I stayed there, drawing my knees up and resting my forearms on them. "Do we have time to try to get her parents?"

Garth kissed Vicky on the forehead, then set her down. He glanced at his watch, then at me. "Yeah," he said, once more pulling me to my feet and holding me under the arm as he steered me toward the golf cart.

"Uh, how much time do we have?"

"Just about enough for a very quick chat with a bunch of fools."