Showdown Page 29

  “Touch it? They’re covered in it.”

  “I mean Samuel and his friends, when they touched you in the upper library.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then. It’s worth a try.”

  “The salve will turn them?” Billy asked.

  “Soften them.”

  Billy couldn’t imagine Tyler or Christine or Samuel entering the tunnels, salve or no salve. “There’s no way they’ll agree.”

  “No? Do they have greater resolve than you?”

  “Of course not. They’re just slower.”

  “Well then, it’s time you brought them up to speed.”

  “What about the story?”

  “The story is the point. Christine, Tyler, and Samuel are writing into Paradise too. Remove their influence and you’ll be free to write your heart’s desire. Your writing is far more concentrated than the others’, something I’m still trying to understand. They’re writing what you’ve told them to write, but half of it is conflicting mush that does nothing to achieve our primary objective. Yours and Darcy’s is more focused and to the point. It’s better to eliminate the opposition above and focus your own writing than to devote time to the others down here.”

  “What about the cop?” Billy asked.

  “Go after Samuel and his friends, then write. And when you write, you can be as obvious as you want. You’ve already let the thread about the gel die—that’s good, there’s no need to pretend that a little hallucinogenic gel caused the people to see things. Your writing has seduced them already. It’s time to go for their throats.” He paused.

  “I have some specific statements that I want you to write into your book. I’m working on the wording now. We’ve just begun,my friend. What I have in mind for this world will blow your mind.”

  He walked to the gate.

  “And what about you? Why won’t you show me your face?”

  The monk turned back. He stared at Billy for a long time, then he casually raised his hand and lifted the mask off his face.

  Billy blinked. How was this possible?

  “How did you . . .”

  “I didn’t, Billy. You did.”

  IN THE wake of the monk’s visit, Billy applied himself to his task with a new urgency.

  He and Darcy found Christine and Tyler less than an hour later, walking from the dining room. They probably visited the cafeteria three times a day, like they all used to.

  “Let me do the talking,” he mumbled to Darcy.

  “Yeah.”

  Christine and Tyler stopped talking and slowed when they were still twenty yards off.

  “Hey, Billy,” Christine said. She was trying to sound natural, but Billy heard the tightness in her throat, as if she had just swallowed a mouse in that dining room of theirs.

  “Hey.”

  The pair stopped ten feet away. “You okay?” Christine asked.

  Am I okay? Well now, that’s ridiculous. Do I look okay? Of course I’m okay.Of course not.

  “I beat you handily in the debate. Did I strike you as not being okay?”

  She nodded. “Yes, you did. It was good to see you earlier.”

  Oh, quit the mushy stuff, like you’re the one to be big here.

  “Where’s Samuel?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  Honestly, Billy was more relieved than disappointed.“We have a problem,” he said. “Down below.”

  Christine tilted her head in interest and waited for him to continue. He shifted on his feet, wishing he were in his study writing instead of up here playing tiddlywinks with Christine.

  “We’ve had, umm . . . an accident. Shannon’s sick and can’t get out.”

  He held his breath for a moment and then forced himself to breathe, trying to think how a person would really act in his supposed predicament. Problem was, he didn’t really care if Shannon or David or anybody was really sick, and he was having difficulty remembering how it felt to care.

  “Shannon is sick? In the forbidden levels?” A spark of concern lit Christine’s eyes.

  “In the lower levels. They’re no longer forbidden, thanks to you.”

  Christine didn’t bat an eye. “Take her to the infirmary, Billy. It’s still open.”

  “That’s just it. We’re all kind of weak.” Christine would never buy this stupid little story. Even now she was probably on the verge of throwing her head back in laughter.

  “You’re all sick?” If she doubted his story, her face didn’t betray her.

  “No. We just have a lot to do down there and we don’t get much sleep.”

  Since when did being tired preclude someone from taking a sick friend to the infirmary? He tried to strengthen his reasoning.

  “We do things that take a lot of energy, so we could sleep for days, but we never do because there’s just too much to do.”He fidgeted with his fingers. “I mean, in a matter of speaking. Kind of like being tired only it feels like you’re sick a little.”

  Billy was quite sure he’d just blown the whole thing,mumbling like a fool.

  “Okay, take us to the entrance. But bring Shannon out to us there,” Christine said.

  Tyler stared at her. “We can’t go down there!”

  “We’re not going in.We’re just showing a little decency here.”

  “But it’s forbidden! No one ever said we can’t go down there unless Shannon is sick and needs a lift. They just said don’t go down.”

  “Technically it’s not forbidden, although I get your point, it is for us. But Shannon has never been sick down there, has she? How would you like to be Shannon?”

  “I don’t see why three or four of them can’t carry her to the infirmary. She can’t weigh more than seventy-five pounds. They climbed up the stairs to get here, didn’t they? They can’t be that weak.”

  “They are going to carry her, Tyler. To the entrance. Right, Billy? We’ll just help her from there. I don’t see how that really violates the spirit of any rule.”

  Billy watched the whole exchange with fascination. Students in the process of justifying.

  “How bad is she?” Tyler asked.

  It took a second for Billy to realize the question was directed to him. “Shannon? Yes, well . . . not really. She’s okay but not for long. In fact she could die at any time. You never really know with sickness.”

  “Okay, let’s go then,” Christine said.

  Billy did not move. A small voice objected somewhere inside of him. That was too easy, it said. He blinked and realized they were waiting for him. He trudged toward the staircase at the end of the hall.

  It took them five minutes to get to the main floor. Both Tyler and Christine followed diligently. One more flight of stairs into the dungeon. From here the steps were stone, and they absorbed the sound of Billy’s steps as he plodded down them.

  Then they approached the charred black doors, closed like two tombstones, wavering in the torch’s shadows. Billy remembered how his heart had pounded when he first saw the doors. Did Christine feel that now? If the doors didn’t get to her, one look inside and she would fold. They all did.

  He walked to the center of the room and turned around. Christine and Tyler entered with bulging eyes and parted lips, and if he wasn’t mistaken, their apparent wavering resulted from weak knees, not the shifting flames.

  He had his answer.

  Billy glanced at Darcy, walked to the doors, and shoved them open inward. Darcy walked in ahead of him and he followed without looking back. No matter, he would see them soon enough.

  The doors closed behind him, and he forgot about Christine and Tyler in favor of the writing ahead of him, down that hall to the right, where Paradise and Thomas and Claude and Steve waited.

  “Come on,” he said to Darcy, and together they jogged into the mountain.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PARADISE

  Monday

  FOR THE second day in a row, Johnny awoke with a start and bolted up in bed. For the second day in a row, he knew something had
changed, but he couldn’t place it.

  Then he remembered Thomas.

  It was barely light. He scrambled out of bed and shuffled through his drawers for a new shirt. Found one with a faded red Indy car and pulled it out. He started to shut the drawer, then remembered his socks and bent for the first pair his hand felt.

  His mother’s words rang in his head: Every morning, Johnny, you hear? That doesn’t mean every other morning or every week—you change your socks and underwear every morning!

  Behind him, the glass clattered and his mind posed a simple question. Why is the glass rattling, Johnny?

  Because of the wind, of course.

  Wind?

  Johnny spun to the window. The wooden sill framed a nearly leafless forest, bowing to the east, backlit by a dark, overcast sky.

  Did Thomas know? He had to get to the church! Unless Black stood in the street between his house and the church with his head raised to the sky, laughing. Johnny shuddered and yanked the shirt over his head.

  He tore down the hall and shoved his head into his mother’s bedroom. Empty.

  Johnny ran through the living room and threw open the front door. The street was also empty. Wind blew in angry gusts, whipping sand around the buildings and batting at the few leaves that clung stubbornly to spindly branches. Above Paradise, the sky lay flat and black, a lid clamped over the valley. Worse than he’d seen it.

  Johnny swallowed his dread and ran for the church, shielding his eyes from the wind with his hand.

  An obscure thought floated lazily through his mind—a memory of walking along the beach in Florida, feeling the sand squish between his toes and giving way when he pushed hard. He realized he’d forgotten to put the socks on.

  Johnny reached the railing, climbed the steps as fast as he could, ignoring a pain in his right leg. He pushed the doors open and stepped into the church, breathing hard.

  He ran through the sanctuary toward the stairs that led into the basement.

  Still no sign of anybody.

  The stairway descended into darkness, and he wondered briefly if the town was still asleep. It couldn’t be much past eight, and the way folks slept around here . . .

  But the cop would be awake. As far as he knew, fictional characters didn’t even sleep. Unless Samuel slept . . .

  Maybe Thomas was down in the basement making coffee, waiting for him—for Johnny, his partner—to show up so they could go flush out Black and hang him.

  Johnny crept down the stairs, scarcely making a sound. He landed safely on the basement floor and poked his head around the corner.

  The room looked like a black cavern. He let his eyes adjust to darkness.

  Slowly, familiar forms took shape: the support posts rising to the ceiling every ten feet, a Nerf basketball hoop mounted on the far wall, the white door leading to Paula’s office.

  The kitchen door stood in the shadows across the room. Johnny imagined a dozen pairs of eyes glowing behind the door like trapped owls. He focused on a faint white smudge that appeared in the middle of the door. It looked like someone had hung a plate there. Maybe Thomas, so that if it moved it would bang. Smart. But it wasn’t really hanging, was it? No, it was sitting. On a counter.

  And then Johnny knew he wasn’t looking at the kitchen door at all. He was staring into the kitchen itself, through a wide-open door, at the far counter where a plate leaned against the wall.

  The kitchen was empty!

  He spun, half-expecting to see Claude on the stairs, glaring down at him. But the stairs were empty too.

  He tore up the steps, terrified.

  He wanted to scream out. To shout out the cop’s name. “Thomas! Thomas, they’re gone! Thomaaaaass!” But Thomas was gone too. Maybe being chased by crazies; maybe chasing crazies.

  Or maybe he’d already moved them. Maybe other cops had come with a paddy wagon and taken them all to Junction.

  Johnny made the snap decision to run out the back, just in case they were waiting for him in the street. He tore past Father Yordon’s open office and struck out for the door, gulping at the air like he had just thrust his head through the waves after being submerged for a full minute.

  The door pulled open in his hand, and the black sky filled its frame. Johnny leapt through and found himself face to face with a scene that made the image of Black walking into town seem toasty warm by comparison.

  The church’s back lawn ran seventy-five feet before meeting the forest. Wooden picnic tables sat along the fence, leaving most of the lawn open for children to play. A large oak tree spread its thick arms over a jungle gym to Johnny’s right. The congregation had a running debate over the tree. Half wanted to lop the encroaching oak to the ground so they wouldn’t have to constantly repair the damage inflicted to the roof; half wanted to preserve the oak for its shade and beauty.

  But none of that mattered right now. Right now Johnny’s eyes fell on the crazies who stood on the grass where the children normally played.

  They stood like a mob of looters caught red-handed, thirty or forty of them, with their hands hanging by their sides.

  A dozen miniature sunflower windmills mounted to the fence posts spun madly in the wind. The door behind Johnny slammed shut, but he barely heard it. He stood frozen on the small porch, his arms and feet spread in a defensive crouch.

  Claude Bowers and his little gang stood atop the picnic tables. They might have been gathered for a class photo, all wielding hammers and axes and other heavy objects.

  A larger group bunched closer to the building. Johnny recognized Katie Bowers, her long strawberry hair flying back from her head. Nancy stood on the edge like a big piggy bank. No one spoke. Only a few even turned their heads toward Johnny. The rest stared past him to his right, where the huge oak reached for the sky.

  All of this he saw in a second.

  Then Johnny followed their eyes.

  Thomas’s body hung from a hemp rope wrapped crudely around his neck and tossed over a wide branch above the jungle gym. The body jerked spastically, as though it had dropped just moments before.

  The body had been stripped naked except for a white T-shirt, white boxer briefs, and white socks. They’d cut him up with a machete or maybe an ax. His lower lip sagged, swollen to three times its natural size. His eyes were gone, leaving round red sockets staring into the wind.

  They’d tied his hands behind his back and hog-tied them to his ankles, so he appeared to be kneeling in the air.

  Johnny’s chest froze up. His only movement came from his knees—they shook violently.

  Steve Smither stood below the spinning body, looking up at Thomas like a third grader beaming at his first-place science project. His hands were bloody.

  They were all killers here, but Steve had wrapped the rope around the neck and yanked. And Black had been there breathing in his ear the whole time.

  Johnny’s heart and lungs still weren’t working right, but he turned around and clambered for the door. By some miracle it swung in and he lurched forward. His head felt like a sounding gong, mounted on his shoulders, vibrating. A taunting voice warbled back there somewhere.

  Wanna trip like I do? Wanna trip? Wanna wanna trip?

  From deep in his gut, fury rose into his chest. He stumbled down the hall and then began to run. By the time Johnny reached the front doors, he was sprinting. A thousand voices were screaming in his head, but he couldn’t make them out anymore. He crashed through the doors and tumbled down the concrete steps.

  The first sob broke from his throat there, while he was sprawled on the sidewalk at the foot of the church.

  Then Johnny Drake leapt to his feet and fled Paradise.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE MONASTERY

  Monday

  SAMUEL’S PLAN had failed.

  Johnny had no clue how the offenders got out of the locked kitchen, or how they managed to overpower Thomas, but they had. That was all that mattered.

  Johnny tore up the mountain, cutting his bare feet and scr
aping his knuckles. He’d believed. At least yesterday he’d believed. Today he wasn’t sure about much except that he didn’t have too many alternatives left. Even if he could find a way to Delta, he couldn’t risk bringing more people into Billy’s line of sight. And he couldn’t try to outwit Black’s next move. After Johnny’s performance at the meeting Saturday night, he probably was Black’s next move.

  Fleeing to the monastery was his only choice. Samuel would be there, waiting for him. Maybe he could get his hands on one of those books. Maybe he could give himself some powers.

  Johnny reached the large canyon quickly. He raced around the boulder and faced the cliff where the monastery hid.

  “Samuel!”

  His voice echoed, then drifted off.

  “Samuel!”

  Nothing. Johnny called the name repeatedly for the next ten minutes without a response. He took a few more minutes to gather himself. Then he walked to the outer door, twisted the rusted handle, and pushed the door open.

  The monastery reached for the cliff top. Anything powerful enough to put this huge, ancient monastery here surely had the power to kill Black.

  “Samuel?”

  He couldn’t just stand here forever. For all he knew, Samuel had gone into the tunnels himself. Or been killed.

  The awful possibilities mushroomed in his mind. Why else wasn’t Samuel coming out? Thomas had been killed because something terrible happened to Samuel. Billy had done something.

  Believe, Johnny. Believe.

  He strode to the front doors, turned the handle, and walked right in. The massive foyer was empty except for the paintings and doors and table. His heart echoed in his ears.

  “And what about the basement?”

  Samuel had hesitated. “Off the main hall to the left. A long series of stairs take you down. Not a place anyone in their right mind would want to go.”

  Johnny located the main hall before he could tell himself any different. The hall was wide, carved from stone and paved with bricks. Indirect sunlight filtered from high above.

  Off the main hall to the left.

  “Hello?”

  Johnny jumped back. A boy stood by a door down the hall, looking at him. His skin was bleeding, and he’d smeared some kind of ointment all over his body. He looked worse than the crazies in Paradise.