Second Horseman Out of Eden

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.'

17

I sat against the passenger's door of the golf cart, which was equipped with bicycle pedals, my arm wrapped tightly around Vicky as Garth, his powerful legs pumping furiously, guided the surprisingly speedy cart along a narrow pathway that circled the inner perimeter of the biosphere. To our left, the rotting biomass of Eden's rain forest resembled nothing so much as a giant bowl of green Jell-O that had been tipped over.

'They're planning to hold a Jim Jones-Guyana remembrance party back there,' Garth said as he deftly steered the cart around something lumpy in the middle of the path. 'They want to poison themselves.'

'I know. What are they planning to use?'

'I got close enough to a bowl of the stuff to smell it, and it doesn't smell like Kool-Aid.'

'It was Tanker Thompson's idea.'

'Well, my guess is that they've mixed together gasoline, battery acid, and maybe a few other things to give it color. If they want to check out of this shithole by killing themselves, that stuff will certainly do the trick. But it's going to be ugly.'

'Where are they?'

'They were gathering in the sanctuary of their church when I saw them; they've got the poison and a lot of paper cups up on the altar.' Garth whipped the steering wheel to the right, and we sped along the path next to the concrete wall, toward the glow spilling out of the archway leading to the living quarters. 'I snuck in through a back door. Incidentally, there's a door in the wall behind the church that looks like it must lead to the outside.'

'It does. What time is it, Garth?'

'What difference does it make?' Garth replied evenly. 'We have to go in this direction anyway.'

'We're running a little late, aren't we?'

Garth looked over at me, laughed. 'I love the way you put things. Actually, we're running a lot late.'

'But-'

'Mr. Mongo,' Vicky said, tugging at my sleeve, 'will my mommy and daddy be all right?'

'We're on our way to get them now, Vicky.'

Again, Garth glanced in my direction, frowned. 'Jesus, Mongo, you look green.'

'So do you; it must be the color of the month. At least I don't have to do the driving. How are your legs holding up?'

'Legs? What legs? You had to mention them, right? By the way, if my calculations are correct, that business back there puts me one up on you in the rescue department. You botched your chance in the Blaisdel Building.'

'Bull-nonsense. That doesn't count as a rescue.'

'It doesn't? I could have sworn I saw Thompson standing over you with an ax, and it looked to me like he was getting ready to split you right down the middle.'

'I was just sitting down to get my second wind. But I won't deny that I was happy to see you; I could tell that you were all right, and it meant that I didn't have to rush back to rescue you after I took care of Tanker Thompson. How did you manage to get over there when you did?'

'While I was in the church, I debated whether or not to jump somebody and try to get the information we needed, but they all stayed together. I'd determined that the transmitter wasn't there, and I figured that my best