Second Horseman Out of Eden

12

I awoke to some bad news, some good news, and some more bad news. The bad news was that I was up on a wooden platform, hands securely strapped over my head to some kind of skeletal metal frame; since I didn't recognize anything in my surroundings, I assumed I was in another room on the third floor of the triplex.

The good news was that Garth was there beside me, alive.

The bad news was that he was also strapped to the frame. Judging from the dried blood on his wrists around the leather thongs that cut into his flesh, he'd spent a good deal of time trying-unsuccessfully, obviously-to free himself. It didn't bode well.

"Hey, Mongo," Garth said to me when he saw that I was conscious. "You okay?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

"You've got a hell of a bump on your forehead, and two black eyes. Are you hurting?"

"I'm betting I've got an even bigger bump on the back of my head, but it's nothing that a couple of aspirin won't fix. You?"

"I'm all right-but the situation kind of sucks, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Shit," my brother said with a thin smile. "You can't rescue anybody. What the hell good are you?"

"I didn't even know you were here, brother," I said tightly. Now that I saw that Garth was alive, my relief at finding him was being rapidly supplanted by anger-and I didn't care if it showed. "I didn't know where you were, or whether you were dead or alive, and for some reason that bothered me just a tad-especially when I recalled what William Kenecky looked like when he finally turned up. I was on my way up here to confront the old man."

"Blaisdel's dead, you know. Probably has been for years."

"Yeah; I saw the mummy downstairs. And by the way, I checked through all the files in your office, and couldn't find even a teeny-weeny clue as to what you were up to, or where you were going. That's a procedure we're definitely going to have to change, even if it's in the next life. Where the hell did they catch you?"

Garth studied me for a few moments with his limpid brown eyes, then looked away. "Here," he replied evenly. "I figured Blaisdel would certainly know where the girl was, and I wanted to go right at him; I was tired of all the complications and bullshit."

"You'd already made your decision the last time we talked, hadn't you? Even then, you knew Goddamn well that you were going to try to break in here."

Now Garth looked at me again, nodded. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I thought I'd figured out a way to bypass the security system, and I figured that if I could get close enough to Blaisdel to put a gun to his head, we'd find out fast enough where Vicky Brown is. Obviously, I missed a circuit somewhere; those two ballplayers, Velazian and Rokan, got me on the way in."

"Damn you, Garth!" I snapped. "Why the hell didn't you tell me what you planned to do?!"

"Because I didn't want you to know," he replied matter-of-factly. "I was planning a forced entry, trespassing, and assault on one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. After we found Vicky Brown and made certain she was going to be all right, I didn't care what happened to me; I did care what happened to you. Just by telling you what I was going to do, I'd have made you an accessory to a series of major crimes. You'd have lost your license and your business. Considering that, I couldn't see the sense in involving you in what I considered to be a one-man job."

"Let me tell you something, brother," I said tightly. "You're lucky I'm tied up, because if I wasn't I'd sure as hell go to work on your nose again. Flow do you know I wouldn't have agreed with you? What the hell do you think I'm doing here now? It's true that I came looking for information on you, but why did you assume I wouldn't have done the same for Vicky Brown?"

"You would have. That's my point. You'd have agreed, and you'd have insisted on coming along. I wanted to keep you out of this particular little venture."

"If you weren't my brother, and if I didn't love you, I think I'd call you a shithead. Sometimes you really piss me off."

"How tight are those straps of yours, Mongo?"

I wriggled a bit, wriggled harder, then started really heaving myself around. The leather straps on my wrists and ankles held tight, and I could easily understand how Garth had cut himself trying to get away. "Tight," I said.

"Anything in your bag of tricks that might get us off this frame?"

"Not that I can think of at the moment."

"Then we've got a real problem, Mongo."

"No shit?"

"You don't understand."

"I understand that I don't like being tied up here. But if they just mean to leave us here to die of thirst and starvation, why didn't they simply off us and be done with it?"

"Probably because they're getting their jollies out of letting us think about what's going to happen; with these guys, it's anybody's guess what they're thinking."

"Uh, what's going to happen?"

"Look behind you."

I was spread-eagled to the frame in such a way that it was hard for me to turn my head, but by arching my back and craning my neck it was possible for me to catch a glimpse of what was being supported by the skeletal, boxlike apparatus: it looked like a massive steel cannister, perhaps twelve feet high and more than a yard in diameter, bristling with red, yellow, and blue wires. I swallowed hard, found that my mouth was dry.

"A bomb?" I croaked, looking back at my brother.

"Not just any old bomb, Mongo," Garth replied softly. "What we've got at our backs is the guts of a B-53-a hydrogen bomb, with a built-in nuclear device to set it off. It has a yield of nine megatons-the equivalent of seven hundred and fifty of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. If that thing goes off, Manhattan will be vaporized, and all of the other boroughs will be flattened. Millions of people are going to die, Mongo-not only here, but in Detroit, and Israel, and maybe a few other sites. What happens after that will depend, I suppose, on who the various world leaders think is responsible. Blaisdel-when he was alive-Kenecky, and Peter Patton believed that the explosions would trigger a nuclear war with Russia, because the Bible told them so. I don't know where they found that in the Bible, but they may have been on to something. This bomb, and the others like it, will be triggered by a radio signal beamed by satellite at exactly midnight, New Year's Eve, unless we can find a way to stop it."

Numb with horror, I moved my lips-but no sound came out. Then I realized that I really had nothing to say. I started desperately jerking my body around on the frame; I stopped and let my body sag when I felt blood begin to ooze from the cuts on my wrists and flow down my forearms. "Jesus Christ," I groaned.

"That's who they think ordered this all up," Garth said softly.

"How the hell could they get hold of hydrogen bombs?"

"It probably wasn't nearly as difficult for somebody like Blaisdel as we'd all like to think it should be. For decades, he had his fingers in just about every military production pie there was. He owned a number of bomb production plants that operated under the aegis of the Department of Energy. In the sixties he was building some components of hydrogen bombs-B-53s-for them. They used to be fitted on the Strategic Air Command's B-52 Stratofortresses, but SAC mothballed them in 1983 and went to smaller bombs and Cruise missiles. Then, a while back, the Pentagon made a rather quiet decision to start taking them out of mothballs-probably because the generals are a little concerned that all the newer gadgets aren't nearly as reliable as they're supposed to be; they wanted some serious, proven firepower on hand. That much is for certain. My guess is that if we had access to classified information we'd find out that Blaisdel's facilities were used to store the bombs; he had access, and he somehow managed-or made it possible for his lieutenants to manage-to spirit away three or more of them. Considering all the talent he had working for him, it's even conceivable that he had his own built."

"How do you know all this?"

"I spent a lot of time in the library checking up on Blaisdel, remember? That's where I found out about the defense contract work. When I found myself tied up here with that thing behind me for company, I put the rest together. What I didn't know, Velazian, Rokan, and the big guy who was originally driving the car that was tailing me were happy to provide. They're all higher than a kite on this religious ecstasy kick of theirs, and they like to talk about what's going to happen. They were really quite chatty."

I licked my lips, which were now dry and cracked, as I felt a chill go through me. "When was Tanker Thompson around here?"

"Oh, not too long before you got here. When I saw he was missing his ears, I assumed you had something to do with it. What did you do to him, and while you were at it why didn't you kill the son-of-a-bitch?"

"Oh, Jesus, Garth,"I said in a haunted voice that sounded like a stranger's. "I thought I had."

"Yeah?" Garth said dryly. "Well, not quite. I must say, though, that he didn't look too chipper, and he sounded like he had a bad cold." He paused, studied me. "So do you, as a matter of fact."

"The man's a great advertisement for resurrection, and that's for sure," I said, still unable to comprehend how Tanker Thompson could be not only alive, but walking around. In a way, I was as afraid of Thompson as I was of the bomb at my back; the pain, death, and inexorable force he represented was more personal. "I ambushed him-or thought I ambushed him-Sunday morning; I was going to force him to tell me where you were being held. We both took a dunking in the Hudson. The last time I saw him, he looked at most a minute or two away from freezing to death."

"How'd you take his ears off?"

"Krazy Glue; he took them off himself."

Garth shook his head. "He's insane."

"Sure; they all are. Incidentally, Thompson killed Kenecky, and as an afterthought he killed Patton. I don't think there's anybody left in charge of this operation."

Garth grunted. "Blaisdel and Kenecky found each other under some rock years ago. Both heard voices, and both agreed that God was urging them to join forces to bring on Armageddon. This New Year's Eve was the date that was chosen."

"Thompson told you all this?"

"The three of them took turns. I told you, they were all really chatty. They can't wait to die-or for just about everybody else to die-because they think they're going to wake up in a world containing nothing but white, born-again Christians, with Jesus as a kind of kindly Big Brother who'll make sure the trains run on time. There are more Jews in New York than there are in Israel, so that's how we get to be tied to this particular bomb. The bomb in or near Israel is to nail those Jews they don't nail here."

"And the one in Detroit is for the blacks they don't nail here?"

Garth nodded. "Thompson wasn't sure exactly how many bombs there are around the world. Blaisdel and Kenecky were working on this little project for a lot of years."

"Where the hell did Thompson, Velazian, and Rokan go to? They hung around here long enough to form a reception committee for me."

"You were the last bit of business to be taken care of, if you'll pardon the expression. I can't say I'm an expert on their theology, but it seems that not everyone who deserves to be Raptured can be, so God told Blaisdel to build a biosphere to house those deserving few-Blaisdel's and Kenecky's people, naturally-until Armageddon blows over. They believe that radiation and demons can't get in because it's been blessed by God. That's where they are now, I suppose."

"Eden? I saw the model downstairs. So something like that actually does exist, life-size?"

"Yeah. According to my informants, it's somewhere in the desert west of Boise, Idaho. That's where Vicky Brown is; her father's part of the caretaking staff."

"And the signal that will set off the bombs. .?"

"Blaisdel Industries has its own satellite-two of them, as a matter of fact. The radio signal that will trigger all the bombs will be relayed from one of those satellites, and the transmitter that will send the signal is somewhere inside Eden, which is better than ten acres."

"Somewhere?"

"Somewhere. None of those ex-jocks knew where it was, and they didn't seem to care. It's set to automatically transmit at the appropriate time."

"Maybe it won't work."

"Right; maybe it won't work."

Again, I started flopping around on the steel frame, desperately trying to free myself, but I managed only to irritate the chafed, cut flesh on my wrists and ankles even more. I glanced around, looking for something-anything-that at least might give me some idea for how we might get loose. There was nothing-and if there had been, I wouldn't have been able to reach it. Except for the raised platform which we shared with a hydrogen bomb, the large room was empty. A single door, which I assumed opened on to the central corridor on the third floor, was directly across from me. To our left, perhaps fifteen yards away, heavy gray floor-to-ceiling drapes across the windows blocked out any light except for the faint, ghostly illumination radiated by small, recessed lights in the ceiling. It was impossible to tell whether it was day or night.

"What day is it?" I asked, gasping for breath.

"I'm not sure. I was kept in another room until they nabbed you, and there were no windows. I've lost track of time."

"It was a little before noon on Monday when I started up here. How long was I out?"

Garth thought about it, shrugged slightly. "Not too long-I think; you were already strapped up here when they brought me in. It's probably Monday night, maybe Tuesday morning."

"Then, at the outside, we've got three days to find the transmitter and deactivate it."

Garth didn't say anything. He didn't have to. If we couldn't find a way to get free, we weren't going to have to worry about deactivating the transmitter. We didn't even have to worry about being vaporized by the exploding bomb, because it was going to take a lot less than seventy-two hours for us to die of suffocation or heart attacks induced by our hanging, crucifixion-style positions; before too many more hours had passed, the blood would begin to pool in our legs and refuse to be pumped back up to our lungs, hearts, brains. There would be a lot of initial discomfort, then unconsciousness, and finally death. Already, It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe.

"Garth?" I continued hoarsely. "What are we going to do?"

My brother was silent for some time, and I didn't think fie was going to answer. When he did finally speak, I was almost sorry he had.

"I don't think there's anything we can do, Mongo," Garth said in a matter-of-fact tone. His voice was growing weaker. "I can't break or slip out of these straps, and we've seen that you can't; we'll only break our bones trying. For a time, I thought I'd broken my left wrist; now I think it's only sprained. As long as you were still free …"

"I'm sorry, Garth."

"Don't be ridiculous. What could you have done differently?"

"Not got caught."

"They were waiting for you. And if you hadn't come up here, they'd have probably hunted you down and killed you anyway. Alone, there was just nothing you could do."

"You're saying we're just going to hang around here, alive or dead, until this bomb goes off and kills a few million people?"

Garth looked away. "We gave it our best shot, Mongo," he said in a voice so low I could hardly hear him.

"I've never known you to give up hope, Garth."

When Garth turned his head back toward me, I could see that there were tears in his eyes-but the tears were not for himself. "You asked me what I thought, Mongo, and I told you. You think I've given up hope? I haven't. But hope and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee in Times Square. There are times when hope is irrelevant, and this is one of them."

I went into a fit of coughing that was punctuated by a sneeze. It occurred to me, not without some amusement, that I could be coming down with something serious. "That fucking McCloskey," I wheezed. "He cut us loose on this thing, and he's been dragging his feet from day one because he's worried about his pension, which goes into effect at precisely the time this thing is supposed to go off. He's certainly going to start off his retirement with a bang, isn't he?"

"That's terrible, Mongo," Garth said, and grinned. "Really terrible."

"My sense of humor is rapidly deteriorating."

"It's not his fault," Garth said seriously. "He turns out to be a better man than I gave him credit for. After all, he stayed in the department after I turned him in, took the heat and his demotion, and then worked his way back up."

"Oh, terrific. It's just too bad that he never got around to working his way up here."

"He was afraid, Mongo-and probably with good reason. If he had tried to make any kind of serious move on investigating Nuvironment, Patton would have crushed him. In the end, he probably would have lost his pension-and for nothing. He couldn't have cracked this thing."

I was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseous, and I closed my eyes. "We did give it our best shot, didn't we?" I said, and groaned. It was becoming painful to talk.

"Yes."

As if sensing that before long neither of us would be able to talk at all, we changed the subject of our helplessness in the face of our impending deaths, and the deaths of millions of others. We reminisced about the past, our growing up together, past perils, our good times together, and finally, our love for each other. Then I slept, or passed out. I woke up, or dreamed that I woke up, then slept, or dreamed that I slept, or passed out again. Occasionally I would hear Garth's voice calling to me, as if from a great distance, but I couldn't respond, and I knew I was dying.