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  “Although your command of language is most admirable,” Doc said, “I must admit I am not entirely following you, my dear. Perhaps you could expand that a bit?”

  “Magus has traveled to the here and now one too many times,” she said. “The separation between the new universes that were created on each visit has been destroyed by their sheer number and temporal weight. With barriers removed, those unique offshoots are in the process of coalescing—or have already done so. That’s why there is more than one Magus in New York City on this night. That’s why multiple attacks are happening all at once. It’s the same Magus coming here from different times in your future. The Magus you saw running away wasn’t miraculously recovered. It had yet to be injured.”

  “An earlier version of it then?” Ryan said. “And the reason Magus didn’t recognize me on the street was that that particular version of Steel Eyes had never met me before?”

  “You got it.”

  “Dark night!” J.B. said. “This makes my head ache.”

  “What did you mean by ‘catastrophic’?” Mildred asked Vee.

  “Again theoretically, when an object, living or otherwise, moves forward or back in time, the act of traveling builds up a store of kinetic energy in its physical mass.”

  “You mean like a static charge?” Mildred queried.

  “Uh, no,” Vee answered. “More like a thermonuclear bomb.”

  No one spoke for a long moment as that sank in.

  Then Ryan broke the silence, “I need some time to think this through and come up with a new plan. I’m going to take a walk.”

  “Don’t be too long, lover,” Krysty said. “Remember, we’re on kind of a short leash here.”

  * * *

  WHEN VEE OPENED the truck’s driver door, Doc was outside waiting for her. He gallantly offered her his arm. “Would you care to stretch your legs a little, my dear?” he asked.

  “Sure, why not,” she said.

  They started a slow, stately stroll around the still pond. But for the intermittent crackle of gunfire in the distance, it could have been the idyllic setting of a romance novel.

  She wasn’t concerned about Doc misbehaving with her. He seemed a perfect, dignified gentleman. Besides, she knew how to take care of herself.

  He patted her lightly on the arm and said, “Veronica, my dear, I know it is difficult, but you must come to grips with what is about to happen. The nukecaust cannot be ignored in the hopes that it simply goes away. This world is going to end tomorrow, and if you remain here, you will end with it.”

  Doc stopped and turned to face her. “Come back with us to Deathlands when we leave. You will love the challenge and rawness of the place. I sincerely believe you were born for it.”

  As they continued to walk, Doc began to tell her about his world and the strange things that inhabited it. He talked at great length and animatedly about the radiation zones. The swamps. The desolate plains. The villes. The barons. The blackhearts. The doomies. The stickies, scalies and cannies. The scagworms and water-bug people. And the hard-nosed Deathlanders, like the companions, who fought every day for survival against long odds and with scant reward for their efforts. He painted her a picture of a poisoned land teetering on the edge of oblivion. Blessed with absolute freedom and very little justice. Where blaster and blade ruled and mercy was far too often a stranger.

  “Sure enough,” he went on, “the hellscape lacks some of the niceties of the twenty-first century, but those flourishes of culture and technology are going to vanish at high noon tomorrow anyway.”

  Doc paused in his speech and took a deep breath, seeming to summon his courage. Then he said, “I assure you, Veronica, I am not nearly as old as I look. When I was time-trawled against my will, it caused a superficial, premature aging. In a strictly chronological sense, in terms of sunrises and sunsets on the planet, I am in my thirties, not that much older than you.”

  “Gee, Ricky doesn’t look his age, either,” she said. “He told me he just turned twenty.”

  She expected Doc to berate the teenager for lying about his age, for he was clearly nowhere near twenty, but instead he said, “I think you are a remarkable young woman.”

  She suddenly knew where the conversation was headed. It was a turn she intended to cut off before it picked up speed.

  “You’re not really going to propose to me, are you, Doc?” she said incredulously. “You’ve known me for all of six hours.”

  “Not a proposal of marriage, but to propose that you accompany us back to the future, where we could have the time to get to know each other better. The world is going to end tomorrow. There is precious little time left to get acquainted.”

  “I think we should go back now,” she said with finality. Then it was her turn to pat him gently on the arm. “After all, we still have a homicidal, time-traveling cyborg to chill...”

  Doc looked at her and laughed, and the uncomfortable tension of the moment dissipated. “Yes, indeed, chill. You are a quick study, my dear.”

  * * *

  AS RYAN CLIMBED back into the rear of the truck, the others were all there, hunched over and listening to the chatter on the radio. He could tell from the body language something had happened. “What is it?” he said.

  “Vee says the cops have just been pulled off her apartment,” Mildred told him.

  Krysty craned her head around from the passenger seat and smiled up at him. “The way home is clear, lover,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “They’ve already started to pull their forces out,” Vee said. “Sounds like they’re relocating manpower to reinforce precincts that may still come under siege.”

  “That’s our cue, Ryan,” Krysty said. “Our ticket out.”

  “In this truck we can pull right up to the front of my building,” Vee stated. “Lights and siren are the perfect cover. If any cops are left behind, they’ll think we’re picking up the bodies from earlier in the day.”

  “What do you think, Ryan?” Mildred asked. “Are we all on the same page here?”

  “Yeah, only I figured we’d have to fight our way in to reach the unit,” he said. “It’s clear we’ll never catch Magus now, and even if we do, we can’t catch every version of it. My plan was for us to return to the time hole and get the heck out. The sooner the better.”

  “We still have enforcers to deal with at the other end of the pipe,” J.B. said. “A lot of enforcers.”

  “We’ll just have to take our chances with that,” Ryan said.

  “At least we have a chance that way, J.B.,” Mildred said. “If we stay here, we’ve got nothing.”

  “The only way to destroy our Magus, the most recent version, once and for all,” Ryan said, “is to trap it here in the past. We can do that by closing the Deathlands end of the time hole.”

  “Let Magus learn firsthand what hell on Earth is all about,” Mildred asked.

  In the next instant everything went white, the details of the truck interior vanished. Before his eye could recover from the blast of superintense light, a terrible explosion followed—the loudest boom he had ever heard. Two heartbeats later a shock wave jolted the vehicle on its springs, then it was slammed by a blast of hurricane-force wind. Through the windshield to the south, beyond the end of the park’s darkness, an immense orange fireball blossomed. As the companions watched spellbound, from its roiling apex, a churning, dark mushroom cloud rose.

  “My friends, it appears Armageddon has come a day early,” Doc said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The little one was leaning through the limo’s privacy window, intent on hearing the latest bulletin coming over the police-band radio. Trapped in the driver’s seat, McCreedy nearly gagged at the smell of its head. Pus and machine oil. Putrefaction and lubrication.

  From what he could gather from the radio, cops were moving all personnel from a location in the Village to put out fires raging elsewhere in the city. The address meant nothing to him, but it got the little one very excit
ed.

  “Write down that address,” it snapped.

  “Sure.” McCreedy took a pad and pen down from behind the sun visor and made a note.

  As he was putting it back, the little one said, “We must go there at once. There must be no delays. Take the fastest possible route. Do you understand?”

  “Not a problem,” McCreedy said. He looked up into the rearview mirror and winced at the nightmare visage staring back at him. “Do you want to leave the other one behind?” he asked. “It closed the trunk lid, like, three minutes ago.”

  The littlest monster’s face sagged before his eyes; to be accurate, only half of it sagged because the rest of it was metal. And that wasn’t the worst of it. The fan blades of its retinas opened as big as cherry pits.

  “Shouldn’t someone get out and check to see what’s happened?” he said, trying to be helpful.

  “No, you imbecile!” the grating voice roared in his ear. “It’s too late for that! Drive. Drive! If you want to live, drive as fast as you can!”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter! Away from here. Get us away from here!”

  Before the side doors slammed shut, McCreedy already had the heavy car in motion. If the little half-metal bastard wanted fast, he’d give it fast. He cut a tire-squealing turn and rocketed out of the parking garage. The streets were empty, reminding him of scenes from that black-and-white Gregory Peck movie about the end of the world, On the Beach. They were that grim and that empty.

  He headed south, down the center line of a six-lane street. He had the gas pedal mashed against the fire wall; the big-block V-8 was at redline. Given the extreme load it was carrying, even on flat ground and the long straightaway, the limo strained to make ninety.

  Behind them something flashed. It flashed so bright that it blasted through the black-tinted glass. Startled, McCreedy began to oversteer but caught himself and recovered. In the back, the little one let out a long, unbroken yell. A deafening explosion rolled over the vehicle. Then a shock wave slammed into its rear. On both sides of the street, huge ground-level plate-glass windows imploded one after another, like falling dominoes.

  For a sickening instant the back wheels lifted high off the ground, spinning madly, even as the front end nosed down. Through the windshield, all McCreedy could see was pavement. Drive wheels lost, with ninety miles an hour of forward momentum, he was sure the long car was going to posthole, auger in nose first, then flip end over end. As a gale-force wind swept over them, bearing a seething mass of debris, the limo’s rear end came crashing down. His purple-hooded cargo hit the ceiling, then the floor. For a terrifying moment he had no control of the vehicle. It started to slew sideways. Instead of twisting the steering wheel, he let the limo find its own track.

  As they straightened, the little one screamed at him from the rear compartment, “Don’t slow down! Don’t slow down!”

  McCreedy took a quick peek at his side mirror. Something unthinkable was rising in a huge ball of fire from the heart of Manhattan.

  “Not a problem!” he shouted back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lieutenant Nathaniel sat on the apartment floor surrounded by trashed possessions and broken glass. Groggily he took stock of his injuries. He was stunned but not blinded. His ears were ringing some, but he wasn’t deafened—he could hear a squalling symphony of car alarms set off by the explosion. When he touched his face, he felt the hard, sharp ends of bits of glass sticking out of his skin. Touching them hurt, so he stopped doing that. The facial wounds were bleeding, and the blood dripped off his chin and down the front of his NYPD windbreaker, onto the debris between his legs. He wasn’t seriously wounded. The fragments in his face could wait to be removed.

  After he stood up, with his hand flat against the wall, he braced himself and helped Lieutenant Holmes to his feet. “You okay?” he said.

  The ESU leader’s mouth was bleeding. “Holy shit,” he said, “was that what I think it was?” Blood had painted his teeth pink. He hawked and spit a bright red gob on the floor.

  “Whatever it was,” Nathaniel replied, “there are others on duty who can deal with it. That’s not our problem. Our problem is bringing down those responsible. The explosion doesn’t change that. It doesn’t change our game plan, either. They left something important behind, and they’ll be back, you can bet on it.”

  The apartment door opened and three ESU officers entered with sidearms drawn. They looked with concern at their commanders.

  “Are either of you hurt?” one of them asked.

  “No, just superficial cuts,” Nathaniel replied.

  “I’m fine,” Holmes said. “What about the others down the hall?”

  “We got off easy, sir. The front of the building took the brunt of it. Baxter had a fall on the stairs, but he’s okay.”

  Nathaniel was relieved they didn’t need to call in an EMT bus, because he didn’t want to see another NYPD officer hurt this day, and because the presence of a unit on the street could alert the perps that officers were down and that they were walking into a trap.

  “Do you know what hit us, sir?”

  “A real big bomb, son,” Holmes said with a straight face.

  “Probably set off by the terrorist perps we’re hunting,” Nathaniel added. “We’ve got to stop the bastards before they reach this room. That is imperative. Everything depends on it. Stop them at all costs. I don’t care if you have to bring down the building to do it. What we have here might be a second nuclear bomb.”

  The ESU officer looked at the device and frowned. “But if the building goes down, won’t it blow up?”

  “Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Nathaniel stated.

  “If it’s another bomb,” Holmes said, “it’ll blow up for sure if they get their hands on it. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Crystal.”

  It was a shoot-to-kill order. No prisoners.

  “You three, back in position, then,” Holmes said.

  Nathaniel stepped over to the emptied window. The street below looked like a war zone after a blitz attack.

  “Get on the horn and get us a casualty report,” Nathaniel said. “Make sure all the rooftop lookouts are still on-station and ready for action.”

  Before the ESU leader could key his com unit a message from a rooftop came through their earpieces.

  “We have a target in sight. Closing fast. Black stretch limo. No visual on occupants.”

  * * *

  MCCREEDY CHECKED HIS side mirror for the fiftieth time—it had become like a nervous tic—and saw only black sky behind them. After the initial, dome-shaped fireball had burned itself out, the mushroom cloud had been swallowed up by the January night. His ears felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, and when the little one spoke, it sounded as though they were both underwater. He had the Village address written down, so it didn’t matter if he didn’t catch everything that was said. He knew where he was going.

  And there was no one to stop him from getting there.

  The police seemed to have gone underground.

  It was a short trip with no traffic. He made rolling stops through the red signals. When he turned down the street the address was on, most of the streetlights were out and there were only a couple of lights on in the rows of brownstones. The limo’s headlights lit up burned-out cars, buildings without window glass, miles of crime-scene tape and drifts of miscellaneous litter. It looked like any street in South Bronx; only it wasn’t South Bronx—it was Manhattan.

  A steel claw hand reached through the privacy screen and clutched his shoulder. Even through the padding of his uniform jacket, the squeeze was so hard it made him squirm and shut his eyes.

  Faintly, as if from down a long, empty tunnel, a metallic voice said, “Stop here.”

  McCreedy double-parked beside a pair of burned-out wrecks at the curb.

  The little one turned to the five monsters stinking up the passenger compartment’s surround of white leather couches. “No matter what
the radio said, there may be an ambush waiting for us. I want you to search all the buildings on this street, starting with that one.”

  A metal finger pointed at an entrance crisscrossed with yellow plastic tape.

  “If you find any humans hiding inside, kill them. And when you’re done with that, move on to the other buildings.”

  As the big boys in purple piled out of the limo, the little one turned to McCreedy and said, “Their species has evolved a highly refined olfactory sense. They can smell humans a mile away.”

  He needed no explanation of what they did to humans after they found them.

  * * *

  STANDING IN THE darkened room, Nathaniel edged around the side of the tall windowsill, watching the stretch limo through an infrared spotting scope as it stopped in the middle of the street.

  The murdering bastards were riding in style.

  Behind him, Holmes spoke softly into his com link microphone, giving the order to the snipers on rooftops across the street to move forward and assume firing positions. “Brothers and sisters may be in the line of fire but out of sight,” he said. “Make sure of your shot angles and background.”

  Having seen what little effect 5.56 mm bullets had on them, Holmes had pulled out the big guns, literally. All four of the precinct’s M82 Barretts were lined up on the opposite rooftops. If used on human beings, fifty-caliber weapons were in violation of the Geneva Convention; they were officially designated as anti-materiel.

  Truckstoppers, in other words.

  From what Nathaniel had seen, the perps were trucks. And for sure they needed stopping.

  “Maybe you’d better stay back, out of the line of fire,” the ESU leader said. “Let my people handle it.”

  “Come in after you’ve wrapped it up in a bow?” Nathaniel said. “Not fucking likely, Holmes.”