668, page 18
“Maybe I should talk to him,” Kent said.
“Maybe you could get shot.”
Kent considered. “A white flag.”
“We don’t have one and don’t look at me like that, the shirt is yellow. It matches.”
So much for makeshift miracles, he thought.
Then he looked down at his hands, and a slow grin crossed his lips and kept on going to his cheeks. “Hey,” he called to Quentin at the next tree, some twelve to thirteen feet away, “if you see a chance to make it clear, take it.”
Quentin nodded solemnly over the clutching Sheila who once again had buried her face in his chest. He was pale, there was a trace of blood on his right shoulder where someone, most likely Marsha, had creased him, and yet the determination in his expression was inspiring in a Little Big Horn sort of way.
“Montana!” Maclemmon roared, his arrogant voice carrying over the street like thunder.
Kent took a deep breath.
Chita kissed his cheek for luck.
He kissed her cheek in thanks for the luck, kissed her lips as a deposit against withdrawals for future luck, then brought the Bingomomicron up in a clever use of flayed nun remnants for shield, and stepped away from the tree. Not too far away, however; he was brave, but he wanted an out if he needed it.
The fourth of the Nine Sacred Grids melted.
Still counting from the bottom.
Flames crackled.
Houses vibrated.
Windows exploded.
The ground shook.
Maclemmon moved arrogantly to the top of the steps. “I want the damn book, Montana.”
Kent gave him the best baronial glare of disdain he’d ever expressed, which was enough, for the nonce, to reel the robed figure back a step and veil his face with a momentary expression of doubt and anxiety.
He recovered: “The book, or I’ll destroy you all!”
“You’re sounding a wee desperate,” Kent said with mock sympathy. “Could it be that you’re more interesting in living than I am?”
Maclemmon tripped on his robe, fell down the steps, bounded to his feet and spread his arms cheerfully. “I’m not the one who’s going to die, you fool.”
Kent tilted his head in feigned innocent perplexity. “Then why do you want the book?”
“Sentimental reasons.”
“Ah.”
Maclemmon moved to the end of the walk. “Kent.”
“Howie.”
A glance over his robed shoulder before Maclemmon lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “Kent, we’re all reasonable men here, yes? We’ve had our differences, but all that’s in the past, wouldn’t you say? Give us the book, old man, and I’ll make sure you survive the Final Coming Pretty Soon of the Older Deities. And anyone else you want to name.”
“Me,” Chita whispered from behind the tree.
A prolonged subterranean grumbling, a pyrotechnic pyre of sparks, the screaming of tortured wood, all signaled the collapse of a house onto its foundation.
And that’s when Kent couldn’t help but notice since it was virtually right in front of him that the stately Queen Anne which harbored the well from which he had taken the humongous ugly book was absolutely untouched by any of the neighborhood’s various conflagrations. Not a window broken, not a speck of paint blistered, not a clapboard scorched. Without widening his eyes, he widened his eyes.
And without moving his lips, he said sideways, “Chita, when I give the signal, I want you to pin those people down.”
“All of them?”
“Just the ones with guns.”
He sensed a shrug. “Okay.”
“Howie,” he said, louder, “I’ll make you a deal.”
“Hey,” Chita whispered.
“What is it?” Maclemmon asked suspiciously as he moved to the curb.
Kent stepped off his curb, the ponderous book shifting slightly side to side as he saw from his extensive peripheral vision the acolytes drawing enough beads on him to make a necklace. He tried to wear a cloak of confidence, armor of unflappability, coat of calm, but he feared Maclemmon would suspect how truly, afraid he was anyway. Not that it made much difference. He had, in the space of a few short seconds and in a flash of intuition, deciphered the elegant elderly gentlemen’s message, and realized that he had but one chance to make the solution work.
One chance.
One life to live.
Jesus.
“Hey, psst, what’s the signal?”
Maclemmon was now less than ten feet away, hands on his pudgy hips, pudgy lips curled in a sneer. “What deal, Kent?”
Kent braced himself.
Maclemmon looked at Number 668 and waved to prove to his anxious followers that he was all right. When another house collapsed, he threw his head back and laughed robustly at the dark green sky.
The cowl fell from his head.
His hair was stark white.
“Kent,” he warned jovially, “don’t try to con me, now. You know it’s never worked before except that once, and it won’t work now. You’re done and delivered, old son, and I’m the one who done it.”
Kent tensed.
“So. The deal?” But Maclemmon wasn’t as confident as he appeared. His fingers kept snapping, his right foot kept tapping, and a faint twitch jerked at the comer of one eye.
The south end of the street buckled with a grinding roar, and both men danced to maintain their balance.
“I don’t want to die,” Kent said at last, jaw tight, neck muscles working.
Maclemmon smiled as a shark would smile if a shark could smile at the offer of a free lunch of Scottish caviar. “Just give me the book, and I’ll put in a word.”
“And the… the girl?” Kent said, a visible shudder racing through him.
“Of course, of course. No problem.” Maclemmon’s voice became steel. “The book, Montana. Give me the sacred book. Now!”
“Do you give your word of honor?”
Maclemmon smirked. “As a gentleman,” and he bowed. Another house collapsed, and Sheila screamed.
Kent looked, he couldn’t help it, it was automatic and she was so damn loud, and saw the saintly girl racing headlong up the street toward her flame-engulfed home, Quentin racing along behind her.
There were no shots.
Soon they vanished into the thickening smoke, and the sudden thickening fog that had moved in on them while the houses were burning, unless, of course, it was only more smoke from other burning houses in other parts of town. It was difficult to tell; everything stank of burning houses.
But at least, he thought, the kids have escaped.
For the time being.
“Something else,” he said, turning back to the pudgy cowled figure who had so obviously faked his own death it was almost criminal to bring it up. “Something else.”
Maclemmon snorted impatiently. “What?”
“Your hair. What happened to your hair?”
Maclemmon grew pale and scrambled the cowl back over his head. “Never you mind.”
“Something frightened you.”
Maclemmon started, recovered, swallowed, sneered. “Not me, Kent. You know me.”
Kent wondered if indeed he knew Howie at all anymore. “Then there’s something else. I’d hoped you’d tell me—”
“Enough!” Maclemmon spat, and raised his right hand high over his head. “This hand,” he declared solemnly, looking up at his right hand, “is going to come down in about five seconds. When it does, all those people back there, and up there, and over there, are going to shoot you. And I will have the book. And you will be dead. Your choice, Kent. So choose.”
“What about the something else?”
“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the something else. You’re trying to bilk me again, Kent, you stubborn devil, and it won’t happen.”
Kent looked at his watch.
Maclemmon looked at his watch.
Chita whispered, “The signal, what’s the damn signal?” Suddenly across the sky and from out of the house next to the one Kent had inherited and was supposed to have stayed in but didn’t, green light flared and flashed and swept and crisscrossed and circled and blossomed and bloomed; the trees swayed as if buffeted by a powerful, otherworldly wind; cracks appeared in the tarmac and concrete; sirens cried in the distance; and thick clouds of dark green and darker black began to gather over the small town of Hamtucket, Rhode Island.
“Two seconds,” Maclemmon announced generously.
Kent wished his life would flash across his eyes so he could make a few minor adjustments.
“One second.”
That awful roaring began again, this time much quieter, and much, much closer.
“Wait,” said Kent calmly as Maclemmon’s hand came down. “What?” The hand paused halfway.
Kent held out the book. “The book.”
Maclemmon looked at him sideways, one eye closed, the other not sure. “What’s the catch?”
“None.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“No bilking?”
Kent laughed. “Me? Bilk the expert?”
Maclemmon laughed with him. “You? Bilk the expert?”
“Take the book, man, and be done with it. You’ve given your word, and I accept that.”
Maclemmon crossed the space between them in a single whooping bound. “Then you,” he said cackling, “are a Weedin’ idiot.”
The fifth of the Nine Sacred Grids melted.
Maclemmon reached for the book.
Kent pulled it away.
Maclemmon scowled, slightly off-balance before he’d been reaching for the book. As a result, Kent was able to spin him neatly around with his free hand and whisper, “Your slip’s showing, Howie.”
At the same time, the dedicated acolytes, seeing the vital right hand come down, opened fire.
“Is that the signal?” Chita whispered.
And Kent ducked as best he could behind the pudgy robed figure, and counted to ten while at least three times that many bullets perforated the robe, the cowl, the sandals, the T-shirt underneath, the rainbow boxer shorts, and eight of the most vital nonmusical organs in Maclemmon’s prancing, spinning, dancing, jerking body.
“That’s the signal,” Chita decided.
She opened fire.
At the same time, though not quite the same time as the other time, Kent lunged to his feet and sprinted in an awkward crouch across the road, holding the book up in case the acolytes tried to stop him, a rather unlikely event since they were pinned down by Chita’s ferocious barrage.
At least most of them were pinned down.
John Laste wasn’t pinned down; he was dead with a bullet to his wallet which he kept in his evening jacket just in case. Nor was Sunday pinned down, except by Kenilworth Smith, who had decided that shooting barons wasn’t medically correct and wanted to spend his last moments in biological research, the genetic stuff having gone nowhere. Nor, in fact, were Wally and Marsha pinned down since, on the one hand, bushes offered no protection at all from bullets and, on the other hand, neither did glass windows.
Caroline was still swooned on the dining room floor.
But somebody was still shooting at him as he vaulted the picket fence in front of the Queen Anne, zig-zagged across the yard, and sprang onto the porch; and that somebody was doing a damn good job of almost hitting him, too. He was forced to press himself against, and preferably into, the locked front door as bullets whizzed and winged and pinged and creased around him in such mindless fury that he feared he’d never be able to complete the second part of the plan he had thought of while bargaining with Maclemmon.
Then Chita stopped shooting.
He looked as best he dared across the street and saw, with horror, the signal she sent him that told him, in rather obscene Latin gestures, that she was out of ammunition.
The somebody wasn’t, however; he directed his fire at Chita, who yelped and ducked back behind the tree.
Kent, who was getting used to not wasting time, wasted no time charging madly across the porch and leaping off the other end, a drastic response required of him upon remembering that the basement door was bolted, banded, and covered with mystic signs. He raced along the side of the house, discovered an outside basement door, flung it open, ran down the steps, and skidded to a halt.
The sixth Sacred Grid melted.
The basement was as neat as he remembered it, but it was awfully green. Curiously enough, the devastation and disturbances affecting the outside world were muted in here, except for the snarling and slavering and growling and roaring that rose from the well in the middle of the floor.
Kent had no desire to see what was down there. Yet, if he was right, if he had interpreted the mysterious message correctly, he would have to see what was down there, because what was down there was coming up here, and it had to get up here before he could do what he had to do to make sure that it wouldn’t get out of here.
If he was wrong, on the other hand, he was cooked.
If he was wrong, he would see what no other human being has seen in thousands of years; he would see the terrible visage of Bog-Muggoth, and his other ugly god buddies; he would see, and he would go permanently … totally … mad.
Dead, then, or nuts.
Him, then, or the world.
Dead, then, or nuts.
The seventh Sacred Grid melted.
Kent heard the bubbling and hissing as the grid’s steel bars melted; he heard the scrabbling and scraping of long sharp claws digging into the well’s walls; he heard heavy rasping bubbling hissing breathing as the owner of those claws clawed its way up the well’s walls.
He heard footsteps in the tunnel.
Amazing.
He hurried to the well, did not look down, but rested the Bingomomicron on the lip.
Rex Regal, as untidy as he’d ever been in his life, burst into the room and aimed his uncollapsed collapsible rifle at Kent’s heart.
“The book,” said Rex.
Kent smiled. “No.”
Rex paled. “What do you mean, no?”
Kent opened the Bingomomicron to a random page, frowned at the unintelligible language inscribed there, raised an eyebrow at the graphic woodcut impression on the facing page, and turned the page. More words he couldn’t read, and more pictures and illustrations that, in a man with a weaker constitution, would have produced severe abdominal contractions.
“What are you doing?” Rex demanded.
“Browsing,” Kent answered calmly.
“I’ll kill you. Give me the book.”
“You can kill me,” Kent said, “but the book isn’t going to do you a damn bit of good.”
Rex took a step closer. “What are you talking about? We must have the Final Words of the Final Coming or we’ll all be murdered in our beds!”
Kent nodded toward the bubbling hissing clawing heavy breathing thing making its way toward the eighth Sacred Grid. “I don’t think Bog-Muggoth needs landing directions now.”
Rex gaped. “My god.” In his extreme distress, he raked his fingers through his hair. “You were right all along. We’ve been tricked.” He glanced at the ceiling. “They’re not coming from outer space after all.”
“Oh yes they are,” Kent corrected.
Rex looked at the well.
The basement door wrenched open and Chita ran down the steps, a gun in each hand.
She stared at Kent, she stared at Rex, she stared at the well. “Do I have timing or what?”
“How did you get here?” Kent asked.
“Through the door.”
“Are you all right?”
“The book!” Rex screamed.
She shrugged her unwounded shoulder. “I’ll live.”
“Like hell, you woman you,” Rex snarled, whirled, and aimed the rifle at her breast, changed his mind and aimed it at her face, changed his mind and aimed it at her left kneecap.
Chita shot him.
Rex staggered backward and collided with the wall.
Kent closed the Bingomomicron and peered over the lip of the well.
The eighth Sacred Grid melted.
Green; nothing but swirling clouds of green in every hue and every shade. Yet, beneath that swirling putrescent green was a dark putrescent figure that Kent realized immediately was but the anthropomorphic visualization of an Older Deity whose true image would be known only when it broke through the final Sacred Grid.
He waited.
He had to wait.
If he moved too soon, it would be too soon and all would be lost; if he moved too late, all would be lost.
His timing had to be perfect.
Rex fired at Chita.
Hissing.
Bubbling.
Clawing.
Chita shot Rex, who fell back against the wall again.
Kent glanced at his watch, and wondered with a brief surge of inopportune curiosity just what it was that had driven Howmaster Maclemmon to tempt such an indescribable fate, all for the dubious honor of becoming ruler of a world that would have been nothing but desolation as far as the alien eye could see; what voracious needs within him, what childhood abuses and adult mistreatment and lifelong deprivations had been his that he had been blinded to the fool that he really was, to the pathetic pudgy idiot he had turned out to be; what hell had he gone through to make him turn out this way?
Kent didn’t know; he figured Howie was just a prick.
Rex shot at Chita.
Bubbling.
Clawing.
Hissing.
Scratching.
Chita shot Rex, ruined his tuxedo, and Rex fell back against the basement wall again.
The room began to shake, the well began to crumble, and the green intensified to an almost blinding green with some gold around the edges.
Rex began to sag. “The book,” he gasped as he tried to keep his lapels in line. “Please. Use … the … book.”
