Vito scrambled to the rear of the car he was under, figuring he'd be safer if he was as far away as possible from all that hot debris. He saw a fight happening right next to him. He could only see the legs of the people involved, but he gathered a panic-stricken tourist was trying to wrestle a gun away from a Werewolf. The guy's girlfriend was trying to stop him. Vito was still trying to decide whom he should root for when the Werewolf succeeded in knocking the guy down. The guy landed on his butt, doubled over with the wind knocked out of him. His girl-a black chick in a tight green dress-knelt beside him and said something. Vito couldn't hear what because of all the noise going down, but whatever it was, it didn't do either any good, because two seconds later the pair was riddled with bullets and lying in a pool of blood. Vito's stomach tightened into a slab as he watched the Werewolf walk away. Vito resolved to stay where he was until one side was wiped out or the cops arrived, whichever came first. He wasn't going to be like some fool showing off to his girlfriend, and he wasn't going to have any stories to brag about to whoever was left in the Calvino clan tomorrow. He was going to survive, and nothing more. That would be enough.
Across the street a couple of fool Werewolves threw Molotov cocktails. Vito imagined he was a bug, lying low in a pile of leaves, hoping if he imagined hard enough, then maybe on some level he would become one. Even then, he thought, being a bug might still be too big.
Vito turned around to see a familiar pair of legs kneeling beside the dead couple. The person was low enough so Vito could see his face. It was the hunchback, making the sign of the cross. Vito couldn't help wondering just how intelligent this nut-case really was.
Suddenly the hunchback turned his head, and Vito found himself staring directly into the nut-case's eyes.
He believed he saw many things happening there. The eyes quickly misted as if they were peering into some far-off place just around the corner. Fear manifested itself in the hunchback's eyes. His face lost all color, and he opened his mouth to say something.
But whatever he had on his mind, it was already too late to say it. In that brief second before Vito was engulfed in the flames of the Molotov cocktail that smashed under the car, he was curiously aware that the hunchback recoiled from something that hadn't happened yet.
X
The young preacher woke up on the floor of the sushi bar. The bar was packed with folks attempting to escape the chaos outside, which, from what he could hear, resembled one of the more horrendous visions from the Book of Revelations.
The place where the young preacher lay, however, was nearly empty. It contained just a few corpses and a lot of dead insects.
Belinda May was nowhere to be found.
The young preacher rose, brushed off a few dead insects clinging to his jacket and trousers, and then sat down in the nearest booth to nurse his aching head. He touched the spot where the throbbing was the greatest. When he took his fingers away, they were flecked with dried blood.
From outside he heard the shrill sound of approaching sirens. The police were coming. He hoped they were bringing with them a full complement of paramedics. Of course there was still all that shooting and screaming going on outside too, so the scene from the good book wasn't over yet.
Suddenly the sushi bar was racked from the shock waves of a nearby explosion. The young preacher dived under the booth and struck his head against the pedestal. He didn't mind. After what he had already been through, a tad more excruciating pain wasn't going to make that much difference.
He crawled on the floor through a pile of dead bugs, under the limp legs of the dead Pesticide, and wondered where Belinda May was. He couldn't think straight, but he knew he couldn't let his mental fog prevent him from finding her. What would the people say? What would the Lord say, or the reporters? Worse, what would she say if he tried to have her again and discovered he didn't have the courage to brave fire and brimstone for the honor of parting her like the Red Sea?
He was vaguely aware of people trying to stop him as he got up and staggered into the street where the ruins of a car burned. There weren't nearly as many panic-stricken people running about as he had expected. Bodies, bloody or burned to a crisp, were strewn all over the sidewalks. The young preacher hoped the television crew was picking all this up.
Where's Belinda May? he wondered.
Then he saw the tentacled tough in the middle of the street. The tough held a limp Belinda May high, daring others to make her a target.
The tough approached some hoods with machine guns. The hoods were beaten and battered, but they were still alive. And they were lifting their guns.
The tough lowered Belinda May. He was going to use her as a shield!
XI
Now that it was too late to make a difference, Quasiman remembered that Father Squid had sent him to the Edge to prevent Wyrm from making a hit on a Mafia don.
Of course neither Quasiman, Squid, or the individual who had provided the information about the hit had guessed that Wyrm would cover his tracks with a sea of blood. It was proving to be an effective, if brutal, idea. And although Quasiman knew no one would blame him for being unable to prevent the bloodshed of the evening, he hated himself for not having done anything to prevent all this suffering.
He had seen so many people die. A few details were lost as portions of his brain phased in and out of reality, but nothing could diminish the profound sense of desolation that assailed him. The worst death he had seen was that of the kid hiding beneath that car. He'd watched the flames engulf the kid before the event had actually happened. Maybe that was why it had been so unnerving.
But the night wasn't over yet. Quasiman had seen the blood, but the thunder was still to come.
Quasiman belatedly noticed the sounds of the approaching sirens as he decided he might as well split with the rest of the survivors. A few hoods and Werewolves still battled on the street, but Wyrm had doubtlessly made himself scarce long ago. Quasiman was still visualizing where he wanted to be when he saw the Werewolf, an unconscious woman in his tentacle above his head, walking down the middle of the street toward a couple of hoods. The hoods lifted their weapons.
Quasiman didn't need precognitive senses to guess what might happen next. He knew he had to help the woman, somehow.
He was about to make a turn through space when he saw the man with the familiar face rushing toward the Werewolf and the woman. The blasting reverberating in Quasiman's head wasn't exactly thunder.
XII
If the young preacher had given the matter a serious thought, he would have gotten down on his knees and prayed. Instead he ran as fast as he could toward the Werewolf and knocked him down. The hood's tentacle snapped like a whip, flinging Belinda May to safety. She landed on the hood of an automobile. At the same time the Werewolf and the young preacher struck the ground, the two members of the Calvino clan pulled the triggers of their machine guns.
Surprisingly the young preacher felt no anticipation for the next life to come. Instead he felt a curious sense of regret, along with a particular, only slightly contradictory sense of relief. He drew his mind in upon itself and tightening it up into a psychic ball, hurled it to a place where he had once dared not look.
The gunshots were like thunderclaps magnified to an infinite power, and he almost visualized the bullets speeding through the barrels. If this was to be the last nanosecond of his life, well}hen, he would live it gladly. It was still a long time.
Enveloped by cold, he felt himself going down. Going down, down, down into a hell colder than any polar nightmare. He felt his soul dissipating. Was this what death was like? Would he soon envision himself lying on the street, surrounded by the others who had died before him? Would he then be inexorably pulled toward a beckoning white light, where the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ stood side by side with his own mother, awaiting him with outstretched arms? Would he know at last what Heaven was like?