George Chesbro: Second Horseman Out of Eden

As I watched, my mouth opening and closing in horror, the Browns, with Vicky being dragged between them on the ground, rushed up to him. Garth hit the man with a right cross to the chin, knocking him, unconscious, to the ground. Then he grabbed the woman's arm as she tried to slip past him, pushed her hard to one side at the same time as he scooped up the child in his arms.

The last thing I heard before falling down into the hot mist was the sound of more distant screaming coming from inside Eden.

The screams of the doomed, poisoned men and women who had "escaped" back into Eden kept echoing through my dreams, along with visions of the people crushed in and around the doorway. I thought I had seen Garth stop the Browns, and rescue Vicky-but I wasn't sure it hadn't been an hallucination. To escape the screams and visions, and to satisfy a terrible need in me to make sure the child was safe, I struggled back up through the hot mist that still cloaked me.

I opened my eyes to find myself looking up into a very familiar face that was brightened by a most unfamiliar smile. Mr. Lippitt, our ancient, totally bald, seemingly ageless friend who was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and with whom we had shared so many adventures, hardly ever smiled. But now his smile was a veritable grin, and his large, soulful brown eyes gleamed with warmth.

Behind him and slightly to his left, at the opposite side of what appeared to be the hold of a cargo plane outfitted as a hospital emergency room, my brother, wearing slippers and wrapped up in a heavy gray woolen blanket, was watching as an Air Force medic gently applied a sling to Vicky Brown's injured left arm. A few feet away, a very sheepish-looking Mr. and Mrs. Brown stood by themselves, trembling slightly, arms wrapped around one another, also watching the daughter they would have killed to save from an end of the world that hadn't come, and demons that didn't exist. They looked not only sheepish, but also bewildered and lost-as if, for them, their world really had ended, and they had no idea how they would cope with the one they found themselves in. Despite the infectious pus I knew their thoughts to be, and despite what they had tried to do, I found I felt deep pity for them.

"Don't bother asking me how I feel, Lippitt," I croaked, trying and failing to sit up in the bed. "I feel like shit."

"Considering the fact that you have double pneumonia and are suffering the effects of amphetamine overdose, I don't really find that too surprising," the D.I.A. Director replied, still grinning. "Actually, what I was thinking is how cute you look in pink sneakers. They go quite well with your slightly greenish pallor. It's really quite festive."

"You and your warped sense of humor can go to hell, Lippitt," I said as I finally managed to sit up.

"Lie back, Mongo," the old man said seriously, gently gripping my shoulders and trying to push me back down onto the bed. "You're going to be all right, but you're a very sick man."

"It's all right, Lippitt," Garth said as he came across the hold of the plane, put one arm across the Director's shoulders and used the other to support my back. "He's not going to be able to really rest until he's checked out the situation. Everything's fine, brother. You see Vicky and her parents over there, and none of the bombs exploded. It's all over."

I turned, looked out one of the plane's windows. Searchlights had been set up on the desert, and emergency, and police vehicles were everywhere. There were reporters and photographers with sick expressions on their faces as they watched teams of gauze-masked paramedics carting plastic-shrouded corpses out of Eden.

"The others?" I asked in a small voice.

"A couple who got mashed in the doorway will survive," Lippitt replied, shaking his head slightly. "The rest are all dead-either trampled, or as a result of the poison" they drank after running back in there." He paused, sighed, added softly, "Crazy bastards."

"Crazy bastards is right," I said, glancing over-at the Browns, who, shamefaced, were studying us and listening to our conversation. "Christ, Lippitt, they panicked when the searchlights came on. They thought you were demons"

"I thought they might be chasing you, Garth, and the child. We'd been waiting outside for more than two and a half hours, worrying about you and wondering if you were all right. We were all a bit on edge. The moment the door opened, my first concern was to see just what was going on. I never dreamed the lights would cause them to try to run back and poison themselves."

"There's no way you could have known. You've been out here since ten?"

Lippitt nodded. "Ten here, midnight New York time."

"But-"

"In all likelihood, that was when the signal was supposed to be sent to detonate the bombs. But there was no need to bomb this place, Mongo-especially since you, Garth, and the others were still inside. The National Security Agency managed to identify and scramble the signal from here to the satellite; in fact, I think they might even have found a way to destroy the satellite itself, although they don't want to confirm that, even to me. The point is that the thermonuclear bombs weren't going off once the signal had been disrupted; we confirmed that from the bomb that was dismantled in

New York. Our next concern was the welfare of the Frederickson brothers, the child, and the rest of the people in this cursed place. We had no way of knowing how those inside would react to our forced entry, and virtually no chance of getting in without announcing our presence. Considering the forces and technology the planners of this thing had at their disposal, it was even conceivable to some people, including me, that they might have some sort of doomsday device-say, another hydrogen bomb-inside that they could set off if they were attacked. We just didn't know. You can't see it from here, but we did manage to attach a listening device to the section of the dome over the living quarters. We obviously couldn't hear everything, but we heard enough to know that the two of you were still on the loose and taking care of business, so to speak." Lippitt paused, looked back and forth between Garth and me, smiled wryly. "Past experience with you two has taught me never to underestimate the ability of the Fredericksons to take care of business, and themselves. If we'd heard anything to indicate that you'd been captured, then we'd have gone in. As it was, I felt the best course of action was to wait and see what happened. As I said, the situation was uncertain when the door was finally opened, which is why I ordered the lights turned on."

A khaki-clad angel of mercy appeared beside me with a china cup filled with what turned out to be chicken broth. It seared the roof of my mouth when I sipped it, but I couldn't remember anything ever tasting so good. Then the female medic held up a little paper cup with two purple pills in it. Garth took the cup from her, set it down on the bed next to me.

"Thanks, Lippitt," I said between more sips of the steaming broth. I was almost ready for sleep-lots and lots of it. "Thanks for taking care of business at your end, and thanks for caring about the kid and us. You do good work."

"No, my friends," Lippitt said. Then he really surprised me by hugging Garth, and then me. "You are the ones who do the good work. Because of your willingness to risk everything, including your lives, to help one child, the lives of millions of other people have been saved from a singular act of evil and insanity. The entire world owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude. And who knows? When the parts of this story that won't be classified come out, perhaps people will come to listen to deranged hatemongers like William Kenecky with just a bit less credulity and tolerance. Incidentally, our mutual acquaintance, the president, would like to speak to both of you on the phone when you feel up to it. He'd have been here in person, but he felt that his place was in the White House situation room until this matter had been resolved. I agreed, of course."