Little charged Alan and tackled him to the floor. As the two men scuffled, each trying to gain leverage, Little wrapped his right forearm around Alan’s neck, attempting to put him in a chokehold. Through a blood-red haze, Alan saw that the other survivors were on their feet, yelling in each other’s faces. There was an almost audible snap! Then people were attacking each other. Panic flared bright in Alan’s mind even as red starbursts exploded before his eyes. The air was suddenly too thick, difficult to drag into his lungs. It hurt to breathe. Sound was muted, muffled. Everything seemed to slow down, people moving like figures in a dream of savagery.
Purnell Radhi grabbed Terry Wilson by the throat and was busily throttling the smaller man, while at stage- left, Alan struggled to free himself as Little’s forearm ground into his carotid artery. Fear of losing consciousness filled him with manic strength, and he bent, pivoted, his sudden shift in weight throwing Little over his hip, and slammed the bigger man to the floor. Little was up almost instantly. He stepped forward, a grimace stretching his lips.
He was carrying a switchblade.
“Show you how to fight, Uncle Tom,” Little growled. “Teach you to kick a man in the balls.”
Littl feinted and jabbed with the switchblade as Alan, fueled by adrenaline and the arcane energies of the Red Wake, dodged his attack. Around them, many of the survivors were attacking and killing anyone within reach.
Horgan stood center- stage, calmly presiding over the carnage. He shot one woman who'd stumbled too close to him. It was Mindy Winkler, the woman who had worried about her kids on Staten Island.
A scream from behind him drew Alan’s attention away from Little's attack. A man in the center aisle was grappling with Reed Maxwell. Then Duane Little drove the switchblade into Alan's shoulder. Alan screamed as Little twisted the knife and the blade grated against bone.
Terry Wilson had managed to leave Purnell Radhi dazed on the dusty floor. Now he launched himself over two men who were rolling around on the stage. He landed on Little’s back as the tall man pulled the knife out of Alan’s shoulder. Little swung around, trying to dislodge the smaller man from his back even as the stage manager flailed wildly at Little’s face and head. Then he leaned in and bit the big man’s right ear.
Little screamed, “I’ll kill you! Kill all of you!!!”
Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Alan hit the auditorium floor running. One of the electricians was attacking Reed, bending her backward over one of the seats in the third row. Reed fought, scratching, clawing and punching at the man, but he was oblivious to her attempts to free herself, staring blankly into her face even as he gripped her throat and began to strangle her. Alan slammed his shoulder into Reed’s attacker, grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him away. As the technician fell, his head struck the back of one of the seats. He did not rise again.
“Get out!” Alan screamed into Reed’s face.
Reed nodded. Then she screamed and pointed to the stage. Alan turned in time to see Duane Little stab Terry Wilson, once, twice...a flurry of blows. Terry fell. Then Little turned and pointed the knife at Alan. The glare raging in his eyes felt like a glimpse into the inferno.
Then a shot rang out in the theater.
Duane Little staggered forward, his eyes wide, as a blood erupted from his mouth. The front of his white shirt was stained with the blood flowing from the small neat hole directly over his heart. Then he dropped the knife and fell off the stage. Behind him, Eugenia Fredericks stood shaking, her tears streaking her face, a revolver trembling in her hands.
For a moment, no one spoke. With Little’s death, the crazy intensity in the air seemed to simply evaporate. One moment, the survivors were all at each other’s throats, and the next, a sensation like being submerged in freezing water suddenly descended upon everyone in the theater. In the sudeden silence, Reed walked over to the unconscious electrician and kicked him in the face.
“Bastard!” she screamed.
Alan leaped over the body of Duane Little and up onto the stage to kneel at Terry’s side.
“I only wanted to stop him," Eugenia sobbed. "But he…was hurting Terry… and I killed him!”
While Eugenia wept, Alan could only stare at the face of Terry Wilson. He crumpled to the floor, gently lifted Terry and cradled his friend in his lap. The stage manager lay in a deepening pool of blood. His eyes were closed, his face almost peaceful.
"Help me," Alan whispered to the silent faces staring back at him. "Somebody please...help."
But there was no one there to help him bring back his friend.
*
Duane Little had stabbed Terry nine times. At least two of those blows had pierced the stage manager’s heart. Alan rocked Terry back and forth, fighting back his tears, as he felt the warmth leave Terry’s body.
Keep moving. Don’t stop.
Survivors were ripping down the barricades and running out of the theater and into the streets. Only six people now remained alive in the auditorium.
Reed sat holding the mysterious young boy in her arms. He seemed unnaturally calm as he let Reed embrace him, but physically unharmed.
Richard Stanford, the doctor from Connecticut, over the body of a woman who had attacked him with a trowel from the prop room. He still held the trowel he'd taken away and used to defend himself. His clothes were stained with blood. Eugenia Fredricks sat crying quietly on the floor. Purnell Radhi was holding his head and moaning at the lip of the stage.
Stanford sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the body of the woman he had killed, as Alan lay Terry’s head down gently on the stage floor and stood up.
“Richard,” he said.
Stanford ignored him.
“Richard, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Finally, Stanford looked up, staring at Alan as if he were speaking in a foreign language.
“She…she tried to…stab me," he said. "It was self- defense…you understand that, don't you, Alan?”
“Richard, we have to go now. We need to get out of here and I need you to keep it together.”
At the mention of the people in the theater, Stanford seemed to regain some composure. He looked around, his brow furrowed.
“Jesus, look at this place.”
“We have to go. Do you think you can find your friend’s boat?”
Stanford seemed to weigh the question.
“I want to get the hell out of this place,” he said after a moment. “I can find it. Just give me a minute. I’ll go get Maria.”
Alan nodded as Stanford made his way backstage to awaken the fiancée of the man killed earlier by falling debris. Alan turned to Eugenia who still sat on the floor next to Terry. Reed and the boy approached the stage as Alan offered Eugenia his hand.
“Eugenia?”
She looked up at him. A little of the animation seemed to return to her eyes as she grasped his hand and got to her feet. She looked down at Terry’s body.
“What about Terry?” she asked.
Alan shook his head.
“We have to leave him. There’s no time to bury him. We have to leave him here.”
Eugenia seemed to compact at the thought of leaving Terry. But finally, she nodded and wiped her face with both hands.
“Okay. Let’s hit the bricks.”
Reed approached Alan as they waited for Stanford to return. She studied him with red- rimmed eyes, eyes that had seen too much death. She trembled as she took Alan’s hand in hers.
“Thanks,” she said simply. “You saved my life.”
“I owed you one,” he replied, remembering the way she had solved the problem of the scavenger in the scene shop.
“Are you two alright?” he asked.
The boy was holding Reed’s hand tightly as he stared at the front entrance to the theater. Suddenly, without a word, he lifted his head. His nostrils flared as if scenting something delicious on the air. With a whoop! he pulled away from Reed and jumped off the stage, ran up the aisle and out of the auditorium.
Alan stared after him, then at Reed, who offered a weary shrug. Clearly, the boy had suffered some recent emotional trauma, but Alan was too exhausted, too numb with grief, to crack the child’s secrets. Other things took priority. Like getting out of New York. He walked over to the upstage wall of the set, where a midnight -blue cloak with gold velvet trimming lay upon the throne of the King. It had originally been intended for Lear’s wardrobe. Eugenia Fredericks had designed and constructed the beautiful cloak herself. Alan grabbed the cloak, walked back to Terry Wilson’s body and gently draped it over him, hiding him from view.
“Goodbye, my friend. You should be going with us.”
Then he knelt down for a moment. And he did something he hadn’t done in more than twenty years.
He prayed.
*
Stanford’s face was ashen as he delivered more bad news. The woman whom he’d sedated backstage was dead. He had given her only a small dose of the same sedative he usually prescribed for his patients. Maria Palmieri should have been perfectly safe. But somehow, she had died in her sleep. In his heart of hearts, Stanford told Alan, he believed that she had simply given up the will to live. What he didn’t say, was that he was beginning to think that Maria Palmieri might have made the smartest choice.
As they made for the exit, the sound of breaking glass stopped them all in their tracks.
“What was that?” Reed asked.
Alan felt a cold breeze emanating from the lobby.
“Wait here,” he said.
He ran up toward the exits. When he turned the corner into the lobby, Alan stopped. Titus Horgan was standing in the doorway of the main entrance, his white bandages whipping crazily around his head in the wind from the open doors. He held his snub nosed .38 in his right hand. In the other, he grasped the strange little boy. Several of the people who had fled the fighting lay on the floor at his feet. They were all dead. Alan saw a dead man closest to Horgan. From the clothes that covered the body, he recognized the man he’d come to think of as the “timid scholar,” the one who had argued with Duane Little earlier. His head had been smashed like a rotten melon. Broken glass and planks from the makeshift barricades lay in disarray all around them. The lobby looked as if a truck had smashed in through the shattered windows.
“Horgan…don’t…” Alan stammered.
But Horgan radiated the manic fervor of a man in the throes of an act of devotion, held high on wings of religious zeal. His eyes shone star-bright with the light of a terrible triumph as he kicked away the last board blocking the entrance.
Like a high priest, waiting for his gods to appear, Alan thought.
Reed and the others reached the lobby as Horgan, holding the boy, turned toward him.
“I open the way!” Horgan howled. “The Universal Brotherhood begins here, in this holy place! I welcome the emissaries of Cosmic Change!”
Horgan gripped the boy by the throat.
“Let him go!” Reed screamed. She moved toward him, but Alan restrained her as Horgan lifted the automatic and placed its barrel against the boy’s head.
“What do you want, Titus?” Alan said, not daring to take his eyes off the door that led to the street, half expecting one of the flying predators to swoop down and sail across the lobby.
Have to keep him talking, he thought. As long as he’s listening to his own voice he's not killing people.
“Let the boy go.”
Horgan stared at Alan for a moment as if he were joking.
Suddenly something outside the theater shrieked. It was a sound like nothing Alan had ever heard. His guts churned when the sound was repeated. When it came a third time, the scream was closer. Whatever it was, it was moving toward them.
“Why, I want you, Mr. Whitmore,” Horgan said seemingly unaware of the terrible sound coming from the street. "I'm surprised you even asked the question."
A cold wind was blowing across 42nd street as, outside, the howling thing screamed again. It sounded as if whatever it was it was only a few yards away, but Horgan was oblivious to its presence, completely focused on Alan.
“I want you in exchange for the boy,” he said. Alan looked at the quiet boy, still clutched tightly around the throat by Horgan’s thick forearm. The boy seemed perfectly calm as Horgan drew him in closer to his chest, squeezing him even more tightly. “I will exchange this little fellow for you, since you two seem to have established a rapport. For indeed we have accounts to settle, you and I.”
Alan could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing erect. Death was drawing closer to them; a sense of impending doom seemed to press in on everyone present. They could all feel it. Why couldn’t Horgan?
“What’s happening, Alan?” Eugenia asked. “What is that?”
A crumpled section of newspaper blew into the lobby right between Horgan’s feet. The newspaper blew into the face of the timid scholar, where it stuck, adhering to the gray matter and blood drying in his hair.
Alan took a step forward, both hands raised above his head. "Titus..."
“No theatrics, Mr. Whitmore,” Horgan grinned. “I will kill all of you without hesitation. You see...I'm committed to exposing the truth.”
"Alright," Alan said. "Just don't hurt anyone else. Ok?"
Horgan grinned and shoved the boy, propelled him across the room. Then he trained the gun on Alan as he walked past the boy with his hands still raised. As if drawing energy from the carnage around them, Horgan lashed out and struck him across the face with the butt of the automatic, knocking him to the floor. Alan lay there, his head ringing, the pain mingling with the sharp throbbing in his shoulder where Duane Little had stabbed him, as Horgan aimed the gun at his face.
And a quiet voice spoke over the howling winds.
“No.”
Alan managed to turn his head, and he saw the quiet boy standing behind him.
He was smiling. “No."
His body seemed to fade and shimmer slightly. Then a hazy corona, like a solar flare erupting in slow- motion, exploded the air around the boy. Suddenly, there were two images shimmering in the space the boy occupied, one, that of the boy smiling in the midst of the conflagration, the second, a tall, dark specter that shimmered, coiled and malignant, flickering in and out of view.
Reed and the others scrambled away from the glowing doubled figures even as Horgan raised the gun and aimed it at the boy. Then a long, dark object exploded through the center of his chest. Horgan dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor and fired a round into the ceiling directly above Alan’s head.
Standing outside the entrance was one of the white giants.
She was nearly twelve feet tall, her wiry frame thickly corded with muscle. Double rows of breasts sagged heavily from the creature's chest. She was the color of old bone, her long hair extending in a silver- ornamented braid down the center of her muscular back. The braid blended into a thick tail that lashed back and forth across the pavement.
The giantess gripped something that looked like a long, black javelin in one clawed fist. The other end of the weapon protruded from the center of Horgan’s chest. Horgan screamed as the thing pushed the javelin's length deeper into his body. Blood burst from the front of King Lear’s nightshirt and splashed Horgan’s feet.
The giantess crouched down and looked into the theater with eyes the color of black pearl. When she saw the humans inside, the creature hissed, exposing yellowed fangs. With a rumbling snarl the creature ducked beneath the lintel and stepped into the lobby. The giantess glared at the terrified humans, and her mouth split to further reveal teeth the size of daggers. Still snarling, she turned her gaze back to Horgan. With barely a flick of her forearm, she forced him down onto his face, effortlessly pinning him to the floor.
Fear lit a furnace in Alan’s gut, sharpened his senses. He found the strength to propel himself backward across the floor. Reed and the others were frozen, dwarfed by the size, and the aura of malice that radiated from the alien as it turned and stared down at the glowing boy, who stared back with what seemed only minor interest.
Horgan groaned and wriggled like a fish caught on an obscenely large hook. With a snarl, the white giantess hefted the spear one- handed and pulled Horgan up and off his feet. The giantess inspected him like a man investigating the contents of a shish kebab. As she lifted him higher, Horgan’s body slid further down the weapon, coming to rest at the alien’s clenched fist where it gripped the javelin. Horgan strained to look backward over his shoulder, a gout of blood pumping slowly down his chin to stain the yellowish- white fur of the giantess's chest. Even dying, his face shone with the devotion of an apostle as he reached up and tried to touch the creature's face.
“Heal me…Please…heal…”
The giantess stroked Horgan’s face gently with one clawed finger, then she pulled Horgan’s right arm off at the shoulder and tossed it into a corner. Horgan screeched. His high- pitched wail became a gurgling roar as his blood splashed the face and shoulders of the giantess. Then she tore Horgan’s body apart.
Eugenia’s shriek seemed to break the spell of horror that had paralyzed the others. She turned and ran screaming, back into the theater. Alan and the others stood slack- jawed as the giantess dropped the pieces of Horgan’s corpse. She seemed to sway, and paused, eying the quiet boy as he stepped closer to her.
“Don’t!” Reed spoke as she moved to stop the boy.
The giantess snapped her focus toward Reed. A deep growl rolled out of the monster’s barrel shaped chest. She raised the spear and released an ear- splitting howl. Her eyes narrowed to black slits as Alan pulled Reed back.
“Don’t move,” he breathed.
The giantess leaned down and sniffed at the air around the quiet boy, who, in turn, withstood her examination without the slightest sign of fear.
“Look,” Stanford hissed.
A second creature stepped into the lobby. It was one of the smaller “males” that Alan had seen slaughter the humans on the tour bus. As the creature loomed over the quiet boy, he turned to the three humans standing behind him, and his grin stretched the sharp planes of his face.
“Toys.”
“Come with us!" Reed cried. "We can’t leave you!”
“Play,” the boy whispered. His smile widening, his eyes seemed to shine as he turned away from the humans and approached the aliens, reaching out with his right hand, as if to stroke their skin.
“Let’s go,” Alan said. “Now.”
“What?!?” Reed cried. She shook her head again.
Alan pulled her away before she could protest further.
Richard Stanford hesitated long enough to look back, a part of his natural curiosity strong enough to overcome his terror of what might happen to him, as a third and then a fourth creature surrounded the quiet boy.
What he saw would haunt him for the remainder of his life.
*
They found Eugenia in the tunnel leading to Ravelli’s. She was trying to kick open the door that separated the restaurant from the theater. Together, the survivors forced the old door open. As they entered Ravelli’s, Alan stumbled over something that was blocking the door. He looked down to see Purnell Radhi’s bloodied face staring up at him. Radhi’s mouth hung open, as if entreating Alan to help him. But he was dead.
The four survivors headed west, toward the dark waters of the Hudson River.
To Be Continued...