Men were the real monsters, they always had been.
Wisdom could come from such unlikely sources….
“We’ll bed down here for the night; post sentries,” Cal told Olifiers.
“Whatever you say, Chief,” Olifiers answered, and led his people inside.
As the prairie moon rose into weighted clouds and the smell of coming snow filled the air, Cal instructed Goldie to summon up his patented and reliable (one of the few tricks he could do that was) spheres of light to illumine a path into the bowels of the mall, where a safe camp could be made.
Goldie guided his charges deeper into the enormous open space. It was like an airplane hangar; their hesitant footsteps echoed into the void. He noted their open astonishment as he formed the roiling balls of light-glowing bowling balls made of fog and St. Elmo’s Fire-and thought to himself, It’s a handy trick, but while their mouths say thank you their eyes definitely say creeped out.
The Food Court on the second level-near the extinct escalators, allowing quick access to higher or lower levels on a moment’s notice-proved a suitable location, if one mockingly devoid of food.
It recalled to Goldman a favorite joke he’d had as a boy-he’d pulled it a thousand times, or at least wanted to; standing midway on a stopped escalator frantically calling to the bemused shoppers below, “Help, I’m stuck on this escalator!”
Of course, he never really asked for help, not when he’d been a kid with those ludicrously brilliant parents, their souls like chalk and “empathy” merely a word in their universitized (hell yes, it was a word if he said it was) vocabularies, nor did he ask for help in college or when he joined the workforce or even later, when the world became more tricky and so-called reality particularly elusive.
Nowadays, reality matched what he’d sensed its hidden nature had been all along, ages before anyone else saw it-those in his immediate circle, at least (well, and anyone not in the pay of the Source Project). It gave him some small satisfaction, knowing he’d been right, and evidence that at least on certain isolated occasions he could actually trust his instincts.
But be careful of that, Herman Goldman, he cautioned himself, because you know how you get. The ever-present danger of the bipolar personality, particularly in its manic phase, that blazing conviction that one had everything well in hand…just before taking a magnificent half-gainer off a ledge right into the abyss.
His eyes ran along the walls, cast in the cool radiance of the globes he’d placed along the periphery. The big dusty signs were like plastic tombstones: TACO HAVEN, A TASTE OF ITALY, BURGER STATION…junk food for a junk culture. So much had been disposable in the world gone by, discarded without a care. Now the most disposable thing was life itself, snuffed out in an instant.
Unbidden, the face came to him, delicate and glowing, with eyes like black opal….
Magritte.
Desolation surged up in him, fierce and remorseless, and Goldie knew if he didn’t force the image away he would start screaming and not stop until the massive building came shuddering down around them, burying all thought and memory.
Enough. Peace.
The image of the flare faded and was gone. For now, only for now. Only until he did what he needed to do.
Sanity was a transient thing, as he himself had been transient, was transient still. But it could be held for the moment, summoned like a pale sphere of light.
Goldie helped Olifiers get a fire going, while a solid little bantam named Flo Speakman assembled a spit to cook the dressed fawn three of their band had felled with improvised bolos earlier that morning.
“We sucked at first,” Steve Altman, a diminutive and hyperkinetic Long Island native, confided pridefully. “But we’re making steady improvement. Hey, we actually hit something other than ourselves.”
“Consistency is a talent to foster,” Goldie murmured. And overconfidence can get you killed, he added silently to himself.
You, or someone infinitely more dear…
While Doc oversaw stationing lookouts from Olifiers’s contingent atop the roof of the mall, Cal and Colleen backtracked two miles in the beginnings of snowfall to cover their traces. Snow would blanket the land shortly, but that might not be enough to safeguard them.
“The more people we travel with, the more visible we become,” Colleen cautioned as she watched their back trail over one shoulder.
They rode abreast, both dragging heavy hunks of canvas that had once been part of a four-man tent they’d found in the remains of a camping goods store. Already the chill breeze was licking at the snowy ground in their wake, sending up little puffs of dusty snow, scattering it over their trail.
Colleen swung back around to look at him. “That’s just the way it is, Cal. And no amount of Good Samaritan, hail-fellow-well-met will change that fact. It makes us targets.”
“We’re already targets, Colleen.”
“Yeah, of course, like I don’t know that. It’s practically been our theme song since we crossed the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. What we’re talking here is how big we want the bull’s-eye.”
Cal nodded as he shook the nylon rope that tethered him to his chunk of ex-tent, smoothing out a large wrinkle in the stiff fabric. “I’m planning on cutting them loose, as soon as we find a good place to set them down…safely.”
“Now that’s a tune I can dance to.”
Cal hesitated, reluctant to say more of what he was thinking.
“What?” Colleen prompted. “C’mon, Griffin, I know how you are when you get that look. Give out, don’t be a tease.”
Hell, it had to be said sometime, didn’t it? “I’m thinking of cutting you guys loose, too.” Before she could counter, he added quickly, “At least, you and Doc. Goldie…well, he and the Source, they have a hook in each other. As for me…” He didn’t need to finish it.
“We’ve been round this track before, Cal. You really think you’re gonna shake us off? You get to the Source, you’re gonna need-”
“Colleen, I don’t know how to beat it.” Cal mastered himself, continued with quiet fervor. “I’ve been hoping I’d find some inspiration, some guidance from on high. But I don’t have a clue how to take on the Source-and I’m getting a real strong feeling I’m not about to.” He ran a hand through his hair, blew out a frosty breath. “We saw what it could do in Boone’s Gap, and that was just a finger of it, stretched taut as a rubber band, and it still wiped the floor with us.”
“We beat Primal,” Colleen reminded him, her voice flat, not looking at him, staring into the night.
“Yes, we beat Primal, but he had only a fraction of the power whatever is at the Source will have…and I don’t have to remind you of the cost.”
The snow was falling more heavily now, glistening in their hair and shoulders, enfolding them in its silence, its intimacy.
“I need Goldie, he’s the only way I’m going to find it, I know that-which doesn’t mean I excuse myself. But you and Doc…” Here his voice softened. “I’ve seen the two of you…you’re right together. You deserve a life.”
“Aw geez, Cal, what is this, the Lifetime Channel? No, I forgot, we don’t have that anymore. Which is one of the few good things that’s come out of all this.”
“Don’t joke.”
“Why not? It’s one of the rare things I’m good at.” She looked down as Big-T’s hoof connected with a hillock of snow and sent the powder flying in a wide arc into the darkness. She grew serious, was quiet a long moment that was filled only with the creak of leather and the sound of their canvas drags slithering over the rough ground.
Then finally, in a voice so low he almost didn’t catch it, she said, “I’m scared, Cal.”