The car finally chugged the last few yards to the crest of the hill, slipping gears and wheezing like a foundered racehorse. Sibyl took the VW out of gear to coast downhill in the vain hope her transmission might last just a few hundred miles more. A brilliant flash lit the whole interior of her car with a hellish pink glow. All she could see was after image. Sibyl swore, hastily shifting into first gear—in case she had to do some quick maneuvering around a downed tree—then tapped the brakes until she could see.
There was a hole in front of her.
Not in the road.
In the air.
Sibyl stood on the brakes. Nuggie groaned a protest and fishtailed on the dusty road. The car lurched. She threw in the clutch to keep the engine running. Then she just stared, while the bottom fell out of her viscera and tried to crawl back up the hill without her.
A ragged puncture of brilliant white light was opening out of thin air. It was so bright she couldn't see anything: not through it, not around it, not beyond. Enormous columns of pink lightning crashed on all sides, arcing outward to strike the road, the trees, the clouds—
"Oh, My God..."
It widened, a doorway into hell.
"Ohmighod..."
Her hand slipped on the gear shift. She fumbled with clutch and accelerator, hunted for reverse by feel. Like a rabbit trapped in a glare of headlights, Sibyl couldn't look away. The rupture splitting open in front of her gaped wider than her house. Where it touched the ground, there wasn't any ground. Pink lightning sizzled out of it. The whole world sizzled, while Nuggie's gears groaned and something inside the engine made a sickening, snapping sound. Sibyl jammed the accelerator pedal against the floor.
Impossibly, the car lurched forward.
The brilliant rupture swooped hungrily toward her, vast as the surface of the sun. Sibyl screamed and fought the gear shift. It was frozen in place, solid as a mountain. Lightning caught the VW and danced over the hood, spraying pink hell across the windshield.
Then blinding white light swallowed Nuggie whole.
Sibyl threw her arms across her face and screamed again, high, ragged. The brilliance was so intense it burned. A flash of disorienting nausea tore through her, along with the sensation of falling forever. The last thing she remembered was the vile smell of vomit.
Logan didn't outrun the storm.
Not that he really tried. He was enjoying the view across the lake and the clean, green scent of the wind far too much to seek shelter. He'd sat here since early morning, knitting more of that hideous sweater he'd begun several months ago, just to keep his restless hands occupied. While he knitted, Logan watched tall, ungainly wading birds stalk fish for their dinner—and 'gators stalk birds for theirs. So far the 'gators had gone hungry. Logan's belly rumbled in hollow sympathy.
All through the day a steady parade of college kids, outrageous in pink jeans and orange hair, had hiked down from main campus. Most ignored him, much as they might have ignored a lizard sunning on a log. That was all right. He ignored them, too. Others, though...
Logan glanced up as a foursome made their noisy approach down the wooded path to the observation deck where he sat. Nice-looking kids. Or they might have been, if their clothes hadn't been artistically ripped to shreds, their hair chopped off apparently by machetes, and their faces painted with inch-thick purple and orange makeup.
At least, the girls' were, if he was interpreting the bulges correctly. There wasn't much evidence on which to base a determination, since all four wore at least some makeup, a number of massive, unmatched earrings, and clothes loose enough to disguise even the most tell-tale anatomy. The cloying scent of clove cigarettes filled the air. The cloying sameness of their "rebellious look" blurred them into a whole generation with the same face, the same hair and clothes.
Had Logan's "Me-Generation" of Jim Morrison, LSD, and 'Nam Babies been just as indistinguishable?
"I can't believe he said that, I mean, everybody knows to activate a crystal you've got to bury it under an oak tree, not a stupid pine—"
"Syn, Jez, get a look at the crackerman!"
The girls (he assumed) obediently swiveled their heads to stare at Logan. One of them flipped ash from her cigarette in Logan's general direction. "You'd think the hospital wouldn't let those creeps out without an armed guard. I mean, Jeezus, they're all crazy, what are they doing running around loose?"
"They can't even dress themselves right! And they shuffle around and stare and drool on themselves every time a girl walks by." The other girl shuddered delicately. Her earrings jangled.
"God, one of them's going to pull a real crazy one of these days and kill another bunch of people. Let's get out of here."
They went. He listened as they disappeared back toward the road, still arguing the merits of keeping the "Ward Two" residents locked up. He sighed. He couldn't blame them, really, for being scared, not after the campus murders. Then he tightened his lips. Logan held no illusions, not about himself, at any rate. He knew perfectly well what that foursome saw when they looked at him.
He found, to his surprise, that he didn't really mind.
At first he was wryly amused. Logan Pfeiffer McKee overlooking an insult? Then, gradually, he felt a little lonelier. An osprey sailed out across the water. It dove, struck at a fish and missed, and lifted slowly into the air again. He watched until it disappeared into the woodline across the lake, then shook himself.
Logan couldn't hide from the truth, any more than he could hide from the plastic band on his wrist. He had become one of those grey old men in shabby clothes, the ones kids made fun of and parents watched with wary distrust. He felt old for the first time in his life. Somehow, he couldn't muster enough social consciousness to cut his greying hair or shave his scraggly cinnamon-and-salt beard every day, or even replace the twenty-year-old, olive-drab military "blouse" (aka, British Commando jacket), his t-shirt with time-worn holes through the soft cotton, and much-patched jeans that were his most comfortable clothes. A little hot, true, but he'd been trapped in hotter.
Much hotter. Logan shivered at memories crowding the forefront of his mind like teenagers trying to get seats at a rock concert. Facing the truth was bad enough. Even worse was the cold realization he had no one to jolly him out of his mood.
Growing old in a loony bin didn't do much for a man's self-esteem.
Hell, there were a lot of people who would have denied him even this one-day pass, after...
Logan shied away from those memories. What people thought or didn't think about him was no longer his concern. Legally he had been relieved of any further need to worry about such things. So he wouldn't. He glanced down and found he'd clenched his fingers into white-knuckled fists. He swore softly, then deliberately uncurled his fingers one by one until his hands lay still and dead on the rough wooden bench next to the "commando" jacket he'd shed earlier.
Slowly Logan emptied his mind. He watched the lake and the birds and the sky. The sweep of dark water beyond his bench reflected dark clouds scudding in low above the treetops from the west. Massive arches of lightning discharged through the clouds every few seconds. He smiled to himself, a bitter, wistful little smile, as the lake changed hue from sunny blue to algae green to slate and finally to the murky black of the lowering storm. A snowy egret launched itself from the shallows and flew off into the rising wind, its wings flashing starkly white against sky and water. Farther away, a flock of little cattle egrets or maybe white ibis settled earthward to escape the rising storm.
He drew a deep breath that smelled of dark water and rustling cattails and the thick, unmistakable scent of alligators and slowly allowed the furrows in his brow to smooth out. Dr. Brandon would lecture him on responsibility when he showed up soaking wet—Logan snorted wryly at the very idea—but he didn't consider moving from his seat. The wind was sharp and cool against his face, refreshing after the steaming heat of afternoon. The black lake began to froth as wind tore miniature whitecaps from its surface. Lightning blazed in the seething clouds, crackled through the wind like some living thing seeking its mate in the ground.