Bill said, "Are they…?"
"They're gone," Ba said. His voice was so low, he could barely hear himself.
"Hey, Ba," Jack said. "Maybe they left for—"
"There's blood. So much blood."
"Aw, Jeez," Jack said softly.
Bill lowered his head and pressed a hand over his eyes.
"What do you want us to do, Ba?" Jack said. "You name it, we'll do it."
A good friend, this Jack. They had only met a few days ago and already he was acting like a brother. But nothing could ease the pain in Ba's heart, the growing grief, the bitter self-loathing for leaving the people he loved—his family—unguarded. Why had he—?
He whirled at the sound of a car engine starting in the garage at the rear of the house. He knew that engine. It belonged to the 1938 Graham—the Missus' favorite car.
Fighting the joy that surged up in him, afraid to acknowledge it for fear that it might be for nothing, Ba stumbled into a run toward the rear. He had gone only a few steps when the Graham's shark-nosed grille appeared around the corner of the house. The Missus was behind the wheel, Jeffy beside her. Her mouth formed an O when she saw him. The old car stalled as she braked and then she was out the door and running across the grass toward Ba, arms outflung, face twisted in uncontrollable grief.
"Oh, Ba! Ba! We waited all day for you! I thought we'd lost you too!"
And then the Missus did something she had never done before. She threw her arms around Ba, clung to him and began to sob against his chest.
Ba did not know what to do. He held his arms akimbo, not sure of where to put them. As overjoyed as he was to see her alive, it certainly was not his place to embrace the Missus. But her grief was so deep, so unrestrained…he had never seen her like this, never guessed she was capable of this magnitude of sorrow.
And then Jeffy ran up, and he, too, was crying. He threw his arms around Ba's left leg and hung there.
Gently, gingerly, hesitantly, Ba lowered one hand to the Missus' shoulder and the other to Jeffy's head. His elation at seeing them was tempered by the slowly dawning realization that the picture was incomplete.
Someone was missing.
"The Doctor, Missus?"
"Oh, Ba, he's gone," she sobbed. "Those…things …killed him and dragged him off! He's gone, Ba! Alan's gone and we'll never see him again!"
For a moment Ba thought he glimpsed the Doctor's face peering at him from the shadows in the back seat of the Graham, thought he felt the warmth of his easy smile, the aura of his deep honor and quiet courage.
And then he faded from view and something happened to Ba, something that hadn't happened since his boyhood days in the fishing village where he was born.
Ba began to weep.
As the Change progresses above, so progresses the Change below.
Rasalom's new form grows ever larger. Suspended in its cavern, it is the size of an elephant now. To make room for him, more earth drops away into the soft yellow glow of the bottomless pit below.
With his senses penetrating deep into the earth, Rasalom knows that the Change is progressing unimpeded, and is far ahead of schedule. Chaos reigns above. The sweet honey nectar of fear and misery, the ambrosia of rage and ruin continues to seep through the strata of the earth to nourish him, help him grow, make him ever stronger.
And in the center of the dying city, Glaeken's building stands unmolested, an island of tranquility in a sea of torment. Members of his pathetic little company now rushing back from their trips here and there around the globe with their recovered bits and pieces of the first and second swords. All of them, still clinging so doggedly to their hope.
Good. Rasalom wants to let that hope grow until it is the last great hope left for all humanity. Let them think they've been doing something important, something epochal. The higher their hope lifts them, the longer the fall when they learn they've struggled and died for nothing.
But Rasalom senses them taking comfort in their relative safety, drawing strength from their comradeship. Their peace, uneasy though it may be, is a burr in his hide. He cannot allow this to continue unchallenged. He does not wish to destroy them—yet. But he does wish to breach their insulation, unsettle them, vex them, start them looking over their shoulders.
One of them must die.
Not out in the streets, but in the heart of their safe haven. It must be an ugly death—nothing quick and clean, but slow and painful and messy. And to make the death as unsettling as possible, it must befall a dear member of their number, one who seems the most innocent, the most innocuous, one they never would expect him to single out for such degradation.
The new lips gestating within the sac twist into a semblance of a smile.
Time for a little fun.
In the tunnel leading to the cavern, Rasalom's skin, shed days ago, begins to move. It ripples, swells, fills out to living proportions. Then it rises and begins its journey toward the surface.
As it walks, it tests its voice.
"Mother."
Ba should be driving this, Bill thought as he raced along the deserted LIE, aiming the old Graham for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel like a bullet from a gun. He glanced at his watch. 3:32. Less than forty minutes to sundown. He would have preferred the Queensboro Bridge but remembered that was impassable due to the effects of a gravity hole.
Jack rode shotgun—literally. He sat high in the passenger seat with this huge short-barreled thing—he'd called it a "Spas"—held up in plain sight. Ba sat behind Bill with a similar shotgun in plain view. The two warriors were sending a message: Don't mess with this car. Nick sat behind Jack, Sylvia and the boy were squeezed in the middle, their cat on the boy's lap, their one-eyed dog panting on the floor.
That left the driving chore to Bill. He knew he wasn't the greatest driver, but if they ran into one of the roving gangs that had taken over the city during the day he figured he'd do better with a steering wheel than with a shotgun.
He glanced at Jack who'd been strangely silent and withdrawn since their reunion at the airport. He was definitely on edge. Something eating at him, something he wasn't talking about.
Bill gave a mental shrug. If it concerned them, they'd find out soon enough.
The further he drove into Queens, the more obstacles on the expressway; he wove as quickly as he dared around and through the litter of wrecked or abandoned cars. They slowed him and he wanted to fly.
Carol…he hungered for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand. She consumed his thoughts, his feelings. He wished he could have got a line through to her from the airport, just to let her know he'd made it back and was coming home.
"Better hurry," Nick said from the back.
"Going as fast as I can, Nick."
"Better go faster," he said. His tone was completely flat. He'd reverted to near cataonia since leaving the keep. "It's Carol."
The car swerved slightly as Bill's fingers tightened on the wheel.
"What about Carol?"
"She's in trouble. She needs help."
WNYW-TV
no transmission
MANHATTAN
The head was waiting in the kitchen.
Carol was on her way back from Magda's room, carrying her lunch tray, worrying about Bill and why she hadn't heard from him yet. She screamed and dropped the tray as she rounded the corner and saw it floating in the air. She recognized the face.
"Jimmy!" she cried, then got control of herself.
Not a head, just a face. And not Jimmy. Not her son. She'd almost stopped thinking of him as her son.