'If the rest of you don't come out with us now, you'll be committing suicide, one way or another, for nothing,' Garth announced coldly, then abruptly turned and started for the entrance. Mrs. Brown, with Vicky between us, walked with me, with Vicky's father just behind. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Billy Dale Rokan and the other robed figures hurrying up the aisle after us.
When I came abreast of Garth, I glanced at his watch. It read 12:26. I could not understand how Lippitt could have failed to level the place before midnight-but I was certainly glad that he had.
By the time we reached the path leading to the door cut into the retaining wall, all of the residents of Eden had caught up to us and were close behind. I again glanced over my shoulder, saw in their faces a mixture of hope and anxiety. Despite all I had seen and experienced in connection with bizarre human belief systems over the years, I was astonished anew at the insane and murderous self-delusions our species is capable of; these people, I kept reminding myself, really were still worried about the possibility that beyond the door they would find themselves face to face with demons who had risen from the depths of hell to shred their flesh with tooth and claw. It made me sick. I turned back, stumbled, but caught myself and kept walking. Garth, still leading, was a blur to me. I could have called to him for help, but I didn't want to let go of Vicky, and I was determined to walk out of this rotting hell humans had made on my own.
Garth reached the door, kicked at the lock bar across it. Nothing happened. He kicked again; the bar snapped forward, and the door swung open to let in a draft of cool, sweet-smelling desert air that wafted over my feverish skin like a balm. I opened my mouth wide, drew the clean air into my lungs in great, heaving gulps.
Mrs. Brown, Vicky, and I had just followed Garth through the door when suddenly the night was pierced by powerful searchlights that hit me square in the face, blinding me. I winced, turned away, and lifted my free hand to shield my eyes.
The people behind me began screaming in terror. I felt Vicky being tugged away from me, and I tightened my grip, sensing that something horrible would happen if I let go. But the sudden movement had caught me by surprise, and I felt the small fingers being pulled from my hand as she was tugged back in the direction of Eden.
Everything was spinning around me. I dropped to my knees, desperately reached for the girl with my other hand, couldn't reach her.
'Garth!' I shouted-or tried to shout. The screams of the panicked, terrified people behind me were blocking out all other sounds. The night was filled with horrified shrieking, then screams of pain, the sounds of bodies colliding with each other, and then the sickening crunch and crackle of breaking bones.
The little fingers kept slipping away.
'Garth, help me!'
Billy Dale Rokan's voice momentarily rose above the screams.
And then the child was pulled from me. I collapsed on my face, struggled not to sink down into the hot mist that was swirling all around me. Then my vision cleared for a few moments-just long enough for me to see that Garth was using his body to block the entrance to Eden. I could see that he was standing on top of bodies, and between his outstretched legs I could see the bodies of other white-robed people who, in their blind panic to escape from the 'demons' with their white lights, had crushed one another against the ground or the concrete wall.
As I watched, my mouth opening and closing in horror, the Browns, with Vicky being dragged between them on the ground, rushed up to him. Garth hit the man with a right cross to the chin, knocking him, unconscious, to the ground. Then he grabbed the woman's arm as she tried to slip past him, pushed her hard to one side at the same time as he scooped up the child in his arms.
The last thing I heard before falling down into the hot mist was the sound of more distant screaming coming from inside Eden.
18
The screams of the doomed, poisoned men and women who had 'escaped' back into Eden kept echoing through my dreams, along with visions of the people crushed in and around the doorway. I thought I had seen Garth stop the Browns, and rescue Vicky-but I wasn't sure it hadn't been an hallucination. To escape the screams and visions, and to satisfy a terrible need in me to make sure the child was safe, I struggled back up through the hot mist that still cloaked me.
I opened my eyes to find myself looking up into a very familiar face that was brightened by a most unfamiliar smile. Mr. Lippitt, our ancient, totally bald, seemingly ageless friend who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and with whom we had shared so many adventures, hardly ever smiled. But now his smile was a veritable grin, and his large, soulful brown eyes gleamed with warmth.
Behind him and slightly to his left, at the opposite side of what appeared to be the hold of a cargo plane outfitted as a hospital emergency room, my brother, wearing slippers and wrapped up in a heavy gray woolen blanket, was watching as an Air Force medic gently applied a sling to Vicky Brown's injured left arm. A few feet away, a very sheepish-looking Mr. and Mrs. Brown stood by themselves, trembling slightly, arms wrapped around one another, also watching the daughter they would have killed to save from an end of the world that hadn't come, and demons that didn't exist. They looked not only sheepish, but also bewildered and lost-as if, for them, their world really had ended, and they had no idea how they would cope with the one they found themselves in. Despite the infectious pus I knew their thoughts to be, and despite what they had tried to do, I found I felt deep pity for them.
'Don't bother asking me how I feel, Lippitt,' I croaked, trying and failing to sit up in the bed. 'I feel like shit.'
'Considering the fact that you have double pneumonia and are suffering the effects of amphetamine overdose, I don't really find that too surprising,' the D.I.A. Director replied, still grinning. 'Actually, what I was thinking is how cute you look in pink sneakers. They go quite well with your slightly greenish pallor. It's really quite festive.'
'You and your warped sense of humor can go to hell, Lippitt,' I said as I finally managed to sit up.
'Lie back, Mongo,' the old man said seriously, gently gripping my shoulders and trying to push me back down onto the bed. 'You're going to be all right, but you're a very sick man.'
'It's all right, Lippitt,' Garth said as he came across the hold of the plane, put one arm across the Director's shoulders and used the other to support my back. 'He's not going to be able to really rest until he's checked out the situation. Everything's fine, brother. You see Vicky and her parents over there, and none of the bombs exploded. It's all over.'
I turned, looked out one of the plane's windows. Searchlights had been set up on the desert, and emergency, and police vehicles were everywhere. There were reporters and photographers with sick expressions on their faces as they watched teams of gauze-masked paramedics carting plastic-shrouded corpses out of Eden.
'The others?' I asked in a small voice.
'A couple who got mashed in the doorway will survive,' Lippitt replied, shaking his head slightly. 'The rest are all dead-either trampled, or as a result of the poison' they drank after running back in there.' He paused, sighed, added softly, 'Crazy bastards.'
'Crazy bastards is right,' I said, glancing over-at the Browns, who, shamefaced, were studying us and listening to our conversation. 'Christ, Lippitt, they panicked when the searchlights came on. They thought you were demons'
'I thought they might be chasing you, Garth, and the child. We'd been waiting outside for more than two and a half hours, worrying about you and wondering if you were all right. We were all a bit on edge. The moment the door opened, my first concern was to see just what was going on. I never dreamed the lights would cause them to try to run back and poison themselves.'
'There's no way you could have known. You've been out here since ten?'
Lippitt nodded. 'Ten here, midnight New York time.'
'But-'
'In all likelihood, that was when the signal was supposed to be sent to detonate the bombs. But there was no
