Magic Time

Chapter Nineteen

NEW YORK

At first, consciousness did not return to Cal so much as pay a call nearby.

From the blackness, he heard others calling his name, a man and a woman. Then hands were touching him. But he felt unconnected to it, as though events were playing out in a distant room, some muffled TV show that had nothing to do with him, was none of his concern.

“Is he dead?” That was Colleen, voice tense. “No,” Doc answered. “Hold this.” Silence, accompanied by further probing. “Superficial cuts to the abdomen. . and a nasty bump to the head.”

“Can we lift him onto the bed?”

“I’d feel more comfortable on advice of an X-ray, but-”

“Yeah. Right.”

Cal felt his body lifted, deposited onto the soft mattress. Curious, this feeling of observing himself outside himself, this vague indifference.

“You’re not squeamish, are you?” Doc said admiringly.

“No,” she answered, the sound drifting away as silence reared up and emptied him.

Later, a good deal later, a damp washcloth passed over his eyes and Cal decided to try opening them. Slowly, tentatively, he lifted the lids. Instantly, light tore at him and, with it, searing pain.

Jesus, his head felt like-

Like someone had fucking thrown him into a wall. And with that, he remembered, every last terrible bit of it. Tina!

He sat up quickly in bed, and, Christ, was that a mistake. The room wheeled crazily about, and Cal had to work very hard to keep whatever was still in his stomach more or less where it belonged.

Then strong, gentle hands were on him, easing him back onto downy pillows.

“Easy there, ace.”

Cal squinted against the brutal light. A misty figure stood over him, a familiar lean efficiency.

“Welcome back,” Colleen said.

Cal licked dry lips, tried for a response, but his parched throat managed only an incomprehensible croak. She brought a glass to his lips. He gratefully managed several swallows of water.

Probing beyond the curtain of pain, Cal could feel a bandage wrapped tightly around his middle, under it raw slashes of torn flesh like parallel lines of fire. Stretching slightly, he could also discern the protesting cries of ribs that he hoped were only bruised and not broken.

Doc joined Colleen by the bedside, glowering down at Cal with an affectionate, scolding air. “If it’s of interest, you’ve got a concussion accompanied by a smorgasbord of assorted lacerations and other nastiness.” As he spoke, he lifted the lantern in the dim room, scrutinized the pupils of Cal’s eyes, made him track the flame. “We repeat this every two hours, to be sure.”

Cal could see now that he was in his own room. He tried again to speak, succeeded in a breathy whisper. “Tina. .”

Colleen and Doc glanced at each other, expressions darkening. “She’s. . gone,” Colleen said.

Cal groaned and closed his eyes. Doc touched his shoulder. “Calvin, who did this to you?”

Cal forced his eyes open. “My boss.”

“Geez, who do you work for?” asked Colleen.

“His eyes were like hers,” Cal continued. “Only he was this big lizard thing.” He could see the surprise in their faces but also that they believed him. Good. He didn’t feel up to lengthy explanations. He thought of Tina, alone with Stern, and a wave of bleakness washed over him. “Why would he take her? He could have killed us both. He must’ve thought he did kill me. What would he want with her?”

“One crisis at a time.” Doc gave a small, sad smile. “Do you know where he’d be?”

Cal looked out the window, began to shake his head but stopped himself as the pain flared. “I never heard where he lived. They could be anywhere. . ” He slammed the flat of his hand against the near wall. “I need a damn psychic!”

And it was as if the thought emerged not from himself but was presented to him as a gift. In his mind’s eye, he was back on Fifty-sixth and Fifth, in front of the Stark Building, with the gaudy, absurd figure standing before him, full of jangly conviction.

Goldie.

“It’s omens, Cal,” he had said. “Something’s coming. You keep your head low.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Change, it had seemed incredibly prescient. But looking back on it now, it could easily have been mere coincidence, the ranting of any street-corner crazy any day of the week.

If not for the other thing he had said, the phrase that had made no sense at the time. “Metal wings will fail, leather ones prevail.”

The planes had fallen out of the sky. And in the moment before Cal had lost consciousness following Stern’s attack, the sound that only now came clear, like a vast leathery bed-sheet unfurling.

Wings. Stern had wings.

Desperate, Cal ransacked his memory for the vital clue Goldie had left him, the offhand words. Then he had it: Goldie gesturing at the grate as the subway trains rumbled below. I prefer the subterranean.

Cal flung off the blankets, flailed to rise.

“Calvin, be careful.”

“You’re in no shape to do anything,” Colleen said.

“You’re right,” Cal agreed. “Now will you fucking help me?”

In the end, the heat of his certainty melted them. He felt their hands under his arms, steadying him. Somehow, miraculously, his feet found the floor.

The room was whipping about but he could force it down, tame it. There. It was better now.

He took a deep breath, forced the pain in his head back. There was no time for it.

Darkness beckoned.

“Stay here,” Cal insisted. “He’s kinda paranoid.”

He knelt by the grate with Colleen and Doc. Although it was only late afternoon, Fifth was barely populated, the stores closed up tight. The smell was worse, far worse, than it had been yesterday. A few timid passersby glanced their way curiously, then hurried on at Colleen’s challenging glare. The crossbow and quiver of arrows hung easily across her back. Cal noted she was taking the weapon everywhere now, its polished steel and wood a fierce kind of beauty. It suited her.

And she was far from the only armed person he saw. Colleen’s crowbar eased under the grate, and now the three of them put their shoulders to it, forcing the barred covering up and off the square hole in the sidewalk. They dropped the grate clattering onto the pavement, then stood over the waiting maw. A black murmur like distant ocean reverberated out of it, accompanied by a stale stink.

“This doesn’t impress me as the greatest idea,” said Colleen.

“Yeah. . sure wish I had a better one.” There was no way to track his quarry with any certainty. But whenever Cal had seen Goldie, it had been around these few blocks; they seemed to be his stamping grounds. Just maybe, when he’d gone below each night, he hadn’t gone far.

It was a place to start.

He peered down into the darkness, tightened the straps of his backpack. “Wait forty-five minutes.”

“Then?” Doc questioned.

“Then. .” Cal realized he didn’t have a then. Saying no more, he slid into the opening.

It’s like climbing into a grave. Cal pushed the thought away. He focused on the task at hand, gripping the metal rungs set in the concrete wall of the shaft, lowering himself-how far? He couldn’t see clearly below, couldn’t gauge the depth. As far as it took. That was all the answer he had, for any of this.

The metal and concrete and air about him were sharp with chill, but he felt flushed nonetheless, the wound on his scalp screeching, his head an overinflated balloon. Everything had a muzzy edge of unreality to it. Glancing up, he saw the world above was now no more than a distant square of blue surrounded by blackness. Rung by rung, arms straining, he moved stiffly, as though needing lubrication. Oil can, he thought sardonically. Oil can what?

He felt a subtle shift in the flow of air around him and abruptly his feet found support. He released the last rung and stood, gaining his balance. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and the light from above cast a pallid radiance.

He was in a subway tunnel, was standing, in fact, on the track itself, which snaked away into the darkness. Another time, this would have been cause for alarm, but there was no roar of an approaching train, nothing save a hushed ocean-like murmur that was a sound and not a sound. His fingertips brushed the wall and found no vibration in the stone, no rumble of distant engine and cars. A dead place. . at least as far as the machines were concerned.

As all the world seemed to be dead.

He leaned against the wall and considered his options. How many hundreds, thousands of miles of tunnel serpentined under the streets? I’m looking for a crazy man, Cal thought. Does that make me crazy?

Cal shrugged out of his backpack and unzipped it. His probing hand found the cool glass and metal of the Coleman lantern. He withdrew it, closed up the pack and replaced it, then dug in his jeans pocket for the lighter.

Suddenly, his ears pricked at a strange flitting sound, here and there about him, like an immense, unseen hummingbird. He spun, trying to detect the source.

And then he spied it, in an arched recess against the tunnel wall, twenty feet off. There, seeming to hover in the blackness, was the glowing face of a pale boy, eyes liquid blue, regarding him with wary surprise.

Cal saw him just for a twinkling, then the boy darted back into the darkness, face wild with fear.

“Wait!” Cal ran a few strides after him, lantern banging in his hand. The sound of his voice rebounded off the walls, frighteningly loud, his footfalls staccato accompaniment. But there was no sound of the boy running at all, just that odd thrumming tone, higher now, climbing in pitch, then cutting out to silence.

Cal reached the archway, saw that it was an opening between inbound and outbound tunnels. He dropped onto the other side, eyes straining the darkness, alert for any sound. But there was nothing.

The boy, or whatever it had been, was gone.

Cal lit the lantern, watched its light spread slowly along the trackbed. Ahead of him, vast and still, lay a subway train, like a row of steel coffins. He moved cautiously along it, raising the lantern high to illumine the interior of the cars, the untenanted seats and straps, the ads for skin treatments and personal injury lawyers. “You may have been the victim of an injustice,” one proclaimed. “Have you suffered a recent calamity?”

In the darkness, a pebble thwanged off a metal rail, sending up an echoing reverberation. Cal snapped to wariness. The boy? No. Something else. Listening intently, not breathing, he could make out a soft padding of many feet. Voices too, whispery, guttural. He had a sudden flash of the clump of shadowy figures he’d seen the other night on the street, moving in that queer, flowing rhythm. They had sounded like that. It had made his skin crawl; he’d felt an immediate, unaccountable revulsion.

The sound of their steps was growing louder, coming his way. And with their approach, their voices grew into a din of expectation, excitement. . hunger.

Cal felt a stab of terror. They know I’m here.

He took to his heels, knowing he should extinguish the lantern but unable to bear being alone in the dark with these pursuers.

His flight spurred them, and they broke into a clamorous run behind him, shouting with frenzy and delight. Cal rounded a bend, could hear them closing. His free hand shot to the buck knife in its sheath. He pulled it free in a wild arc, heart hammering, the blood loud in his ears.

And then his foot caught on something, a wire strung taut. Abruptly, he was flying, tumbling headlong. He landed hard, breath knocked out of him, lantern and knife skittering away. He floundered wildly, fighting to rise, and something heavy fell on him from above. A net; it was a weighted net. Snared, he cried out in fear and rage, tore at the ropes. It held fast.

His pursuers slowed, watching. The lantern lay on its side some yards off, miraculously unbroken, illuminating a grotesque tableau.

They were perhaps fifteen in number, grunting among themselves, chuckling malignly as they drew near. There was something loathsome and furtive in the way they moved. In their too-big clothing, they looked like some demented, stunted street gang, pale as grubs, eyes milky white with slitted pupils.

Cal’s eyes darted to his knife, impossibly out of reach. A bare hairy foot came down on the handle. Cal lifted his gaze to the figure, took in the baggy jeans, scuffed bomber jacket, ragged “I Love NY” T-shirt. With a thrill of surprise, Cal realized he knew this one.

It was Rory.

“I seen you.” Rory’s lips curled nastily, revealing stained icepick teeth. “You were with my chick.”

Rory scooped up the knife. As he advanced on Cal, the others followed, pressing close. Cal struggled futilely against the net. They reached toward him with hideous malformed fingers, as Rory swung the knife high and back. .

Suddenly, from the far end of the tunnel came a flashing of lights and booming sounds, like myriad skyrockets going off. The creatures gaped, shielding their eyes. Astonished, Cal craned his neck to see through the netting.

A figure was approaching, fireballs of light shooting out of his hands and bouncing off the walls.

“BEGONE!” The voice was huge and commanding, God on the mountaintop-and a vengeful God, to boot. Terrified, blinded, the little brutes skittered down the tunnel into the darkness, their screams floating in the air and then evaporating.

The fireballs ceased. The figure reached Cal, bent down to him.

“Well. Hello, Cal.”

It was Goldie.

He looked the same as ever, with his cascade of hair, electric clothing, cacophony of buttons pinned to his padded vest. Through his amazement, one of them caught Cal’s eye: REALITY’S A BITCH.

“How-” Cal was gasping, breathless. “How did you-?”

Goldie wiggled his fingers. “That? Little something I just picked up. Doesn’t do jack, but it scares the hell out of them.”

Cal tried to speak, but he was overwhelmed.

“I can see you’re a little freaked. Lemme help you.” Rory had dropped Cal’s knife in his flight, and now Goldie grabbed it up, started to cut away the net.

Cal felt sheepish, ashamed. “I walked right into their trap.”

“Hm?” The net fell away, and Goldie helped Cal to his feet. “Oh no, this is mine.” He grinned and handed him back his knife. “I’m very particular who comes to my place.”

Sergeant Rodriguez hated this part.

He and the rest of his boys stood flanking the back of the wagon, the crowd around it like hungry locusts. His squad had been doling out the emergency rations for the better part of two hours here at Columbus Circle, handing out cans of evaporated milk, Spam and jerky and instant pudding, whatever the hell the government had gotten a lock on.

But now they were getting lean, and it was time to haul ass, move on. This whole thing had been one sorry drag, ever since he’d been called up on active. He’d been minding his own, doing the insurance salesman thing, saving for that SUV for Maria and the kids. Man just couldn’t get a break, that was the gospel truth. And now that order had just come down about not using your weapon under any circumstance, what kind of fucked-up shit was that?

At his nod, Private Halloran closed up the back of the wagon. Corporal Fontana grasped the reins of the two big Clydesdales they’d commandeered from a circus in Jersey.

Seeing they were about to pull a Houdini, the crowd surged forward. Rodriguez, Halloran and Villanova closed ranks, blocking them from the wagon, rifles held loosely but brooking no nonsense.

Rodriguez raised his arms. “That’s it, folks.”

“What’re you talking about?” That came from some red-faced Irish guy. “You still got boxes!”

“Yeah, for other destinations.”

“Lies!” Irish pointed toward the two privates. “I heard ’em say we’re the last on your slate.” He turned to the crowd. “They’re black-marketing it!”

Rodriguez shot Halloran and Villanova a look that scraped paint. Then he glared back at the crowd. “Back off! Now! Understand?”

“We understand you’ve got our food!” Irish loved the sound of his own voice. Jesus, he’d like to clip that asshole, just to make a point.

The crowd pushed forward dangerously as the soldiers held position, twitchy, rifles aimed. Then a voice shouted over the tumult. “Forget it! You’re nothing to them!”

Startled, the crowd turned to the man behind them. Rodriguez stretched to see over their heads. A little bald guy stood twenty, thirty feet back from the crowd. Even from this distance, Rodriguez could see he was different from the others. He stood stock still, cool as gun metal.

“They’d kill you for a dime,” the little guy said.

The crowd was focused on the little guy now, and Rodriguez saw his opportunity. He motioned to Halloran and Villanova. The three jumped into the wagon. Fontana gave the reins a shake, and the Clydesdales broke into a heavy stride, the wagon rattling down the street. Several people, empty-handed, chased after them a few steps, then gave it up.

The others closed in on the little man.

“So what are we supposed to do?” a dark woman in a sari demanded of him. “Starve?”

“No,” he replied calmly, “you learn.” He beamed reassuringly at them. Had they been especially discerning, which they were not, they might have noticed that his eyes were unreadable, opaque as stones.

“Stop whining for handouts,” he continued, “waiting for the ATMs to open. What are your bellies telling you? Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse! And they’re gonna get worse yet. .

“Gather ’round, folks.” Sam Lungo gave them a knowing smile. “We’ve got things to talk about.”

You’ll have to kill them, you know.

Fuckin’ right I will. In his dream Sonny Grimes sat in the Copper Kettle Cafe and everybody was eating but him.

He didn’t see the person at the table with him. Every time he looked across the table, someone was there, all right, but he couldn’t get a clear look at them. Sometimes it just looked like a spot of darkness, like the pupil of an eye with no eye there, not even an iris. Just a dark that went straight back into his brain.

A dark that drank everything into it.

Sometimes there was nothing at all.

Just that voice.

Looking sulkily around at the other people in the restaurant, Sonny recognized nearly everyone he knew, everyone he couldn’t stand, from his mother-young, as she’d been when his dad was alive, and knocking back Johnny Walkers with that creep who’d been her boss when he was a kid, the one who’d send him out of the house when he came over in the afternoon-to Hank Culver, the No-Smoking Nazi. As if it was any of his or anybody else’s goddam business whether he smoked or where he smoked.

And all of them were eating except him.

Waitresses undulated between the tables, saucy little high school girls or chicks out of Penthouse and Hustler, with tight little asses and perky tits and big bedroom smiles: Can I get you something else? A little more coffee? Would you care for a blow job with that? He kept trying to catch their attention-they hadn’t even given him a glass of water, for Chrissakes! — but they looked through him as if he weren’t there.

Bitches, all of them. Assholes.

Over at the next table he saw that slob Arleta Wishart and her two geek sons, chowing down on a banquet that would have embarrassed that old Henry VIII guy who threw chicken bones on the floor in the movies. Roast chickens and bowls of chili and steaks so big they hung over the edge of the plate. .

In his sleep Sonny Grimes twitched, his nose wrinkling in the darkness, for he’d gone to sleep hungry.

Pigs, whispered the voice to him out of the darkness. Yes, pigs.

A pretty waitress came by and smiled at him. KITTEN said the nametag on her size-D boob. He wanted to ask her what the other one’s name was. “Can I get you something?” she asked, widening sympathetic blue eyes.

“Miss,” whined Fred Wishart from the next table. “Miss, get over here right now and get me some more coffee!” He was waving a twenty-dollar bill. There was still coffee in his cup.

Kitten glanced back and forth between Sonny and the bill.

“Get over here now,” yelled Arleta, “or we’ll call the manager and have you fired!”

The pink lip tucked painfully between little white teeth, “I’m sorry,” whispered Kitten. “It’s my job, you see, and I have my mother and grandma to support.”

She left him, stomach rumbling, alone at his dark little table, and Fred and Bob Wishart elbowed one another in the ribs and pointed to him, doubled over with laughter as they gave poor Kitten all kinds of orders to take this back and take that back, and get them this and that. .

You’ll have to kill them, said the Voice softly in Sonny’s heart, and Sonny thought, Yeah.

That’ll suit me just fine.