F. Paul Wilson - Nightworld

Between Madison and Park he came upon police barricades. He slipped past and continued west. Fifty-ninth Street became a nightmare. Deflated, sunken-cheeked, desiccated corpses littered the pavements, body parts were everywhere—a limbless, headless torso on the sidewalk, a leg in a gutter, a gnawed finger atop a mailbox. The closer he got to the Park, the thicker the carnage.

Central Park South was the worst yet—dead people, dead horses still harnessed to their hansom cabs, overturned cars, a taxi half way through the front windows of Mickey Mantle's. Every emergency vehicle and meat wagon in the city seemed to have converged on the area to remove the bodies.

Live people were about, too. All on their way out. The cops weren't allowing cabs or civilian vehicles into the area, so the surviving members of the mink coat and tennis bracelet set were lugging their own suitcases out of the Plaza, the Park Lane, the St. Moritz, the Barbizon-Plaza and lugging them down the avenues to where they could get a ride to the nearest airport.

Jack had picked his way through the area and hurried home to find the old guy's phone number. Then he'd come here.

The intercom buzzed then and Ryan answered it. He seemed pretty much at home here. The doorman said that a Mrs. Nash had arrived. Ryan looked at Jack questioningly.

"It's okay," Jack said. "The old boy said she'd be coming."

Ryan said to send her up, then turned and looked back toward the bedrooms.

"Wonder what changed her mind?" he said to no one in particular. Then he shrugged and led Quinn to the kitchen. "I'm going to fix Nick something to eat. Want anything?"

"No, thanks."

Actually, Jack was hungry but too edgy, too unsettled to eat. Maybe later, at Julio's, over a pint of Courage. A gallon of Courage.

The doorbell rang. He opened it. The Addams family was outside.

At least they reminded him of the Addams family. There was a slinky brunette in a dark dress, a blond kid, and an Oriental Lurch. Only the guy in the wheelchair spoiled the picture.

"Is he here?" said the kid, his blue eyes wide and bright. He poked his head through the doorway and looked up and down the hall. "He's here! I know he's here!"

"Please, Jeffy," the woman said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She looked at Jack. "I'm Sylvia Nash."

Jack liked her voice. You could fall in love with that voice. But he was already in love.

"Hi," Jack said, stepping back and making way. "He's expecting you."

"Where's Mr. Veilleur?" said the guy in the wheelchair.

Jack pointed toward the living room.

"He's around. Come on in. Have a seat." Jack wanted to bite his tongue on that one. The guy already had a seat. "I'll tell him you're here."

Jack stood back and watched them as they all trooped toward the living room—all except the big Oriental whose eyes never stopped moving. He stayed with the group as far as the end of the hall but halted at the threshold of the bigger room. He gave the living room the once-over, then stepped to the side and stood with his back against the wall, his big hands folded in front of him. The drawstring of a plastic Lord & Taylor's bag hung from one of his fingers. Out on the street he might have passed as a tourist who'd been shopping, but Jack had spied the billy club handle protruding from the bag.

Jack admired the way he moved—smooth, silent, graceful for a guy his size. Everything about him said he'd been trained for hand-to-hand combat and security. As he studied the big guy, he realized the big guy was studying him.

Jack wandered over to where he stood. He put out his hand.

"My name's Jack."

The big guy bobbed a quick bow and gave Jack's hand a brief shake.

"Ba," he said in a deep voice.

While Jack tried to figure if that was a personal assessment or a name, he noticed that the big guy's eyes didn't stray from the living room for more than a heartbeat.

"It's safe here," Jack said. "You can relax."

Another bob from Ba and a fleeting, yellow-toothed smile. "Yes. I see. Thank you so very much."

Jack noted with approval that Ba did not relax one bit.

Bill Ryan came in from the kitchen then and greeted the newcomers. He waved Jack in and introduced him to Sylvia Nash, Dr. Alan Bulmer, and the boy, Jeffy. The kid seemed hyper. When Ryan went to get Glaeken, Jack wandered back to Ba.

"Where'd you train?"

"In my homeland—Viet Nam."

Jack wondered if he'd been a Cong.

"Army?"

His dark eyes never left the living room. "Special Forces."

Knew it!

"What's in the bag beside the billy?"

Ba glanced at him, his eyes searching his face for a moment, then he handed the bag to Jack.

Jack took it and loosened the drawstrings. From its weight he guessed there wasn't much more than the billy inside but he checked anyway. He pulled out the club and stared dumbfounded at the hundreds of tiny, gleaming, glass-like teeth protruding from the final ten inches of its business end.

"Good Lord," he whispered. "These are teeth from those—" What had Glaeken called them? "—chew wasps."

Ba said nothing.

Jack gave the club a few short test swings. He'd seen what those little teeth could do. A billy club studded with them made one hell of a weapon.

"How many did you kill?"

"A few," Ba said.

"How about the glob things? Get any of those?"

Ba shook his head.

"Watch out for them," Jack said. He lifted his partially eaten-away sneaker for Ba to see. "The glop in their bellies does this to rubber. It's even worse on skin."

Ba's eyes flicked to Jack's bandaged arm, then away.

Jack slipped the club back into the sack and held it out to him.

"Think you could make me one of those?"

Ba pushed the sack toward Jack. "You may have this."

Reflexively, Jack began to refuse. He didn't accept gifts from strangers. He didn't like to be indebted to anyone, especially someone he'd just met. But he caught himself. They'd met only a few moments ago, had spoken only a few words—Ba hardly any at all—yet he sensed a kinship with the other man. Something like this had happened only a few times in his life. A good feeling. Ba must have sensed it too. The big Oriental was making a gesture. Jack could not refuse.

"What about you? Won't you be needing it?"

"I will make myself another. Many, many teeth where I live."

"All right. I accept." Jack hefted the bag and tucked it under his arm. "Thank you, Ba. I have a feeling this might come in very handy."

Ba nodded silently and watched the living room.

Alan glanced over at where Ba was standing with the dark-haired, quick-eyed man who had been introduced simply as Jack. Something going on between those two, communication on a level he was not privy to. Odd…Ba related to almost no one outside the household.

Alan hauled his attention away from the pair and directed it toward Sylvia and Jeffy.

"He's here, isn't he, Mommy?" Jeffy was saying. He was bouncing on the seat cushion, his head swiveling this way and that. "Isn't he?"

"Yes," Sylvia said patiently. "That's what we were told."

"I bet he's in one of those rooms back there," he said. "Can I go back and see if he's—"

"Jeffy, please sit still," Sylvia said. "It's very bad manners to go wandering around someone's house."

"But I want to see him!"

She put an arm around the boy's shoulders and hugged him against her.

"I know you do, sweetie. So do I. That's why I'm here."

Poor Sylvia. She'd been having such a hard time with Jeffy since Veilleur had shown up two days ago. And now that he was here in the old man's home, the boy was like an overwound spring.

Alan could understand it. He too felt wired. Maybe it was the stress of last night, maybe it was all the coffee he'd poured down his throat this morning. But he had a feeling they were just a small part of it.