Robert R. McCammon: The Collected Stories Part 4

"What?"

"I said... Doom City." The young man stood up; he was about six feet, thin and lanky. His workboots crunched leaves as he crossed the street, and Brad saw that he had a patch on the breast pocket of his shirt that identified him as a Sanitation Department workman. As the young man got closer, Kelly pressed her body against Brad's legs and tried to hide behind the Smurf doll. "Let it ring," the young man said. His eyes were pale green, deep-set and dazed. "If you were to pick that d.a.m.ned thing up... Doom City."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because it is what it is. Somebody's tryin' to find all the strays. Tryin' to run us all down and finish the job. Sweep us all into the gutter, man. Close the world over our heads. Doom City." He blew a plume of smoke into the air that hung between them, unmoving.

"Who are you? Where'd you come from?"

"Name's Neil Spencer. Folks call me Spence. I'm a..." He paused for a few seconds, staring along Baylor Street.

"I used to be a garbage man. 'Til today, that is. 'Til I got to work and found skeletons sitting in the garbage trucks. That was about three hours ago, I guess. I've been doin' a lot of walkin'. Lot of pokin' around." His gaze rested on the little girl, then back to Brad. The payphone was still ringing, and Brad felt the scream kicking behind his teeth.

"You're the first two I've seen with skin," Spence said. "I've been sittin' over there for the last twenty minutes or so. Just waitin' for the world to end, I guess."

"What... happened?" Brad asked. Tears burned his eyes. "My G.o.d... my G.o.d... what happened?"

"Somethin' tore," Spence said tonelessly. "Ripped open. Somethin' won the fight, and I don't think it was who the preachers said was gonna win. I don't know... maybe Death got tired of waitin'. Same thing happened to the dinosaurs. Maybe it's happenin' to people now."

"There's got to be other people somewhere!" Brad shouted. "We can't be the only ones!"

"I don't know about that." Spence drew on his cigarette one last time and flicked the b.u.t.t into the street. "All I know is, somethin' came in the night and had a feast, and when it was done it licked the plate clean. Only it's still hungry." He nodded towards the ringing phone. "Wants to suck on a few more bones. Like I said, man... Doom City. Doom City here, there and everywhere."

The phone gave a final, shrilling shriek and went silent.

Brad heard the child crying again, and he put his hand on her head, stroked her hair to calm her. He realised he was doing it with his b.l.o.o.d.y hand. "We've... we've got to go somewhere... got to do something..."

"Do what?" Spence asked laconically. "Go where? I'm open to suggestions, man."

From the next block came the distant sound of a telephone ringing. Brad stood with his b.l.o.o.d.y hand on Kelly's head, and he didn't know what to say.

"I want to take you somewhere, my friend," Spence told him. "Want to show you something real interestin'. Okay?"

Brad nodded, and he and the little girl followed Neil Spencer north along Dayton Street, past more silent houses and buildings.

Spence led them about four blocks to a Seven-Eleven store, where a skeleton in a yellow dress splotched with blue and purple flowers lolled behind the cash register with a National Enquirer open on its jutting knees. "There you go," Spence said softly. He plucked a pack of Luckies off the display of cigarettes and nodded towards the small TV set on the counter. "Take a look at that, and tell me what we ought to do."

The TV set was on. It was a colour set, and Brad realised after a long, silent moment that the channel was tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour news networks. The picture showed two skeletons-one in a grey suit and the other in a wine-red dress-leaning crookedly over a newsdesk at centre camera; the woman had placed her hand on the man's shoulder, and yellow sheets of the night's news were scattered all over the desktop. Behind the two figures were three or four out-of-focus skeletons, frozen forever at their desks as well. Spence lit another cigarette. An occasional spark of static shot across the unmoving TV picture. "Doom City,"

Spence said. "Not only here, man. It's everywhere. See?"

The telephone behind the counter suddenly started ringing, and Brad put his hands to his ears and screamed. The phone's ringing stopped.

Brad lowered his hands, his breathing as rough and hoa.r.s.e as a trapped animal's.

He looked down at Kelly Burch, and saw that she was smiling.

"It's all right," she said. "You don't have to answer. I found you, didn't I?"

Brad whispered, "Wha-"

The little girl giggled, and as she continued to giggle the laugh changed, grew in intensity and darkness, grew in power and evil until it became a triumphant roar that shook the windows of the Seven-Eleven store. "DOOM CITY!" the thing with pigtails shrieked, and as the mouth strained open the eyes became silver, cold and dead, and from that awful crater of a mouth shot a blinding bolt of blue-white lightning that hit Neil Spencer and seemed to spin him like a top, throwing him off his feet and headlong through the Seven-Eleven's plate-gla.s.s window. He struck the pavement on his belly, and as he tried to get up again Brad Forbes saw that the flesh was dissolving from the young man's bones, falling away in chunks like dried-up tree bark.

Spence made a garbled moaning sound, and Brad went through the store's door with such force that he almost tore it from its hinges. His feet slivered with gla.s.s, Brad ran past Spence and saw the other man's skull grinning up at him as the body writhed and twitched.

"Can't get away!" the thing behind him shouted. "Can't! Can't! Can't!"

Brad looked back over his shoulder, and that was when he saw the lightning burst from her gaping mouth and hurtle through the broken window at him. He flung himself to the pavement, tried to crawl under a parked car. Something hit him, covered him over like an ocean wave, and he heard the monster shout in a voice like the peal of thunder. He was blinded and stunned for a few seconds, but there was no pain... just a needles-and-pins p.r.i.c.kling settling deep into his bones.

Brad got up, started running again. And as he ran he saw the flesh falling from his hands, saw pieces drifting down from his face; fissures ran through his legs, and as the flesh fell away he saw his own bones underneath.

"DOOM CITY!" he heard the monster calling. "DOOM CITY!"

Brad stumbled; he was running on bones, and had left the flesh of his feet behind him on the pavement. He fell, began to tremble and contort.

"I'm cold," he heard himself moan. "I'm cold..."

She awakened with the memory of thunder in her bones.

The house was quiet. The alarm clock hadn't gone off. Sat.u.r.day, she realised. No work today. A rest day. But Lord, what a nightmare she'd had! It was fading now, all jumbled up and incoherent. There'd been thunderstorm last night-she remembered waking up, and seeing lightning flash. But whatever the nightmare had been, she couldn't recall now; she thought she remembered Brad saying something too, but now she didn't know what it was...

That light... so strange. Not like June light. More like... yes, like winter light. Sarah got out of bed and walked across the room. She pushed aside the white curtain and peered out, squinting. A grey fog hung in the trees and over the roofs of the houses on Baylor Street. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Sarah Forbes said, "Brad? Honey? Take a look at this."

He didn't reply, nor did he stir. She glanced at him, saw the wave of his dark hair above the sheet that was pulled up over him like a shroud. "Brad?" she said again, and took a step towards the bed. And suddenly Sarah remembered what he'd said last night, when she'd sat up in a sleepy daze to watch the lightning crackle.

I'm cold, I'm cold.

She grasped the edge of the sheet and pulled it back.

Copyright 1987 by Robert R. McCammon. All rights reserved. This story originally appeared in the anthology Doom City, edited by Charles L. Grant, Tor Books, New York, 1987. Reprinted with permission of the author.

THE NIGHT I KILLED THE KING.

by Robert McCammon and Paul Schulz Ten o'clock on a Friday night. Nasty rain comin' down, like silver needles. Miralee and me were sittin' in the parkin'

lot of the Kentucky Fried Chicken place in Eustace, Arkansas, our windows rolled up and steam on the gla.s.s. "Oh Lord!" she said suddenly. "Oh Lord, that's him! Look at the way he walks!" She sat up straight, and I picked the gun up from the floorboard.

Me and Elvis, we were one of a kind.

I always got mistook for him, even before Miralee dyed my hair black and froze it in the pompadour and I started wearin' the Elvis outfits. I'm talkin' about the real Elvis, of course, when he was somebody worth lookin' at and he hadn't lost the Tupelo snarl, not when he was big as a whale's belly and-G.o.d forgive me-all used up. I weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds soakin' wet, so my Elvis is the King of Dreams, back before he made them dog-a.s.s movies and carried his soul in his wallet.

I'm not knockin' money now, hear? Money is the green grease that runs this world, and you gotta have a wad of it to get by in this day and age. I used to do all sorts of things; I've been a truck driver, a mechanic, a coffin polisher in a funeral home, a used-car salesman, and a bartender in a country-western joint. You do what you have to do to get by, am I right? And n.o.body ever said Dwayne Pressley wasn't one to grab hold of an opportunity when it come a'knockin'. That's why I started wearin' the Elvis outfits, doin' the makeup and all, and Miralee and me went into the soul-channelin' business.

Templin is a quiet town. h.e.l.l, Arkansas is a quiet state. Miralee, my girlfriend goin' on six years, works at the Sophisticated Lady Beauty Shoppe on Central Street in Templin. She can tell you right off: people in Templin have been starved for entertainment for years. Last entertainer who pa.s.sed this way was Joey Heatherton, and her bus was lost on the way to the National Guard Armory in Eustace, forty miles south of us. Anyway, Miralee knew about my Elvis impressions. When you kinda look like the King and your last name is Pressley, you go with the flow, know what I mean? I can sing some, and it ain't hard to find somebody who can play a guitar. Miralee got the band together for me. She's a smart little lady, and ambitious to boot. She went right out and bought some Elvis tapes for the VCR, and I started studyin' 'em. This was right after I got fired from the Templin Tap Room for sellin' liquor to minors under the table. Man's got to make a profit, don't he? h.e.l.l, that's the American way! So, anyhow, I had plenty of time to lay in bed and study ol' Elvis in them concert videos. There were tapes of him just talkin', too, about his life and everythin', so I could get the tw.a.n.g of his accent Memphis-perfect. Then I started practicin' with the band. You know the songs: "Hound Dog," "Burnin' Love," "In the Ghetto," "Jailhouse Rock," all those tunes that make the memories glow like barbecue coals on a summer night. I was better at the motions than I was at the singin', but then again you might have to say the same thing about the King, too.

Miralee got the costumes for me, all them black leather and high-collared jobs covered with rhinestones. She talked Mr. Riggston at the Tap Room into lettin' us do a show there on a Sat.u.r.day night, and if I said I wasn't sweatin' bullets I'd be a d.a.m.n liar. The first few numbers were pretty bad, and I split my tight britches, but I just kept on goin' cause some woman screamed "ELVIS!" and it kinda fired me up. I found out later that Miralee gave her five dollars to do it. But we did good. So good Mr. Riggston wanted us back the next weekend, and he even put an ad in the Templin Journal. About a month after that, you couldn't stir the folks in the Tap Room with a thin stick. Like I say, people were starved for entertainment.

"Ain't no way!" I told Miralee, as I watched the fella go into the Kentucky Fried Chicken place. I was wearin' a cap to hide my pompadour, and I didn't have my Elvis makeup on. I put the pistol down again. "That can't be him. Fella's as big as a barn door."

"I say it is him!" Her eyes, blue as Christmas, locked on me in that way she has that'd make a pit bull turn tail.

"You saw the way he walked!"

"h.e.l.l, he's a big fat guy. All big fat fellers waddle like that."

"No! I mean how he moved his shoulders! You know what I'm talkin' about, you've seen it a hundret times in those videos! I say that's him, and don't you say different!"

When Miralee gets excited, she don't want n.o.body to slap a wet rag in her face. And G.o.d knows I wouldn't want to try. Miralee is a hundred pounds of dynamite with a two second fuse. I just shrugged. The fella I'd seen shamble into the Kentucky Fried Chicken joint had worn a raggedy brown overcoat and had on a cowboy hat that looked puke green with mildew. He'd weighed maybe near three hundred pounds, and the collar of his coat was up so you couldn't see even his profile. As far as I was concerned, it was just some big fat Eustace dude who wanted a bucketful of fried chicken at ten o'clock on a Friday night.

"I'm goin' in to see," Miralee said all of a sudden. She opened the door, slid out from under the Chevy's steerin'

wheel, and stood in the rain. "Keep that d.a.m.n gun ready," she told me, and before I could say yea or nay she was stridin' across the parkin' lot.

I watched her go in. I picked up the pistol again, a little snubnosed .38 with six bullets in it. I shook a bit; the night was chilly for mid-October. I watched the restaurant's front door, and my fingers played with the .38's bone-white grip. I was scared as h.e.l.l, but my mind was made up. If the King showed up with a hankerin' for fried chicken on this rainy Friday night, I was gonna kill him.

We didn't stop with the shows at the Tap Room. We were packin' 'em in every Friday and Sat.u.r.day night, and suddenly Mr. Riggston was my best buddy. But then Miralee started readin' a paperback book she'd bought at a garage sale, and she walked around the house with gla.s.sy eyes. When Miralee's thinkin', she's walkin'. Round and round the house, all night long, like a cat who hears a mouse but can't find the hole. I got a look at the book's cover: My Seven Selves, it was called. Written by some woman whose picture showed her in a long white robe starin' at a big crystal ball in her palm.

Miralee stopped her walkin'. One mornin' she looked at me and asked, in a quiet voice, "Dwayne? You ever hear of somethin' called channelin'?"

This was her drift: that some folks-and the lady in the white robe was one of 'em-could call back the souls of the dead and make 'em talk. Yessir, believe it! That these folks, channelers they were called, could let themselves be took over by the souls of dead people and the dead people would talk through 'em. "That's the most craziest thing I've ever heard in my-" I stopped what I was sayin', 'cause Miralee had a look on her face that makes silence golden.

"Crazy or not," Miralee said, "there's money in it."

My ears perked up like a hound dog's.

The road to riches is paved with suckers and that's G.o.d's honest truth. I started studyin' the Elvis tapes harder than ever, 'til I knew every twitch and sneer. I read that book by the white-robed woman, and though I didn't get the drift of all of it, I learned enough of the babble to get by. Mostly, I worked on my Elvis accent, 'cause Miralee said that soundin' like the King was gonna be real important. Then, when she thought I was ready, she called ads in to the newspapers in Little Rock, Memphis, Knoxville, Birmingham, and Atlanta. After that, we waited. Wasn't two days before we got the first call, from a Tennessee woman. She wanted to know if her husband was messin' round on her, and since the ads said that Elvis knew everythin', just like G.o.d, she figured that he was the one to ask. She showed up at the house on a Tuesday afternoon-a little fireplug of a woman with a white beehive hairdo-and I was scared again like my first night on stage, but I gave her the show Miralee and I had worked out. I didn't pretend I was Elvis, see, but I pretended I was took over by his soul and channelin' him right there in the livin'

room. I wore my Elvis outfit, of course, and I had my makeup on. Oh, I gave her a dandy show, fallin' down on one knee and gyratin' around and actin' up a storm. Then I took her hands and I said, "Darlin'," in the King's voice. She looked just about to faint. "Darlin'," I said, "your man's a good 'un. He knows he better not mess around on you, 'cause you'd leave his a.s.s in a minute and find a young stud, wouldn't you?"

"I sure as h.e.l.l would, Elvis!" she answered, in a choked-up voice.

"He best hold tight to you," I told her, "and you hold tight to him. You be a good wife to him, and he won't do no strayin'. That's what the King has to say to you, darlin'. And one more thing: you've been a mighty loyal fan and I sure do appreciate your love." Then I sang "Amazin' Grace" to her, real quiet-like, and she just about fell out of her chair. Tears ran down her cheeks. She held my hand to her face, and she kissed my ring that has the big E on it in false diamonds.

I didn't like it when she cried. I don't know; it made my heart hurt, kinda. I stood up and gave a few half-a.s.sed twists and shakes, and Miralee told the woman it was the King goin' back to Rock 'n Roll Heaven. Then Miralee told her it would be fifty dollars. The woman didn't flinch, but I did. I put on my sungla.s.ses, and I watched the woman take bills out of her purse and scratch up some change. She only had forty-one dollars. We took it. But by G.o.d if that woman didn't leave smilin' and happy. Miralee said, "Tell your friends about the King's comeback!" and that Tennessee woman answered, "I will, I will, you better believe I will, oh mercy I'm still shakin'

like a schoolgirl!"

I went to the bathroom, took off my shades and looked at my face-the King's face-in the mirror. Lord, lord; what a world this has turned out to be.

The telephone rang. Fella from a little town in Georgia wanted to know if he should open up a bowlin' alley or not. Miralee said Elvis didn't give advice over long-distance. The fella said he'd be there to see us on Thursday night. And that was just the beginnin' of it.

People are lonely. They want to believe, more than anythin'. They want to connect with somethin', they want to see into the future. Listenin' to those people, and seein' 'em look at me like I was really Elvis... well, the world's just one big Heartbreak Hotel, and all of a sudden I had the room keys in my fist. At fifty dollars a pop, ten or twelve "fans" a week, you'd better believe Miralee and I were standin' hip-deep in high cotton. I watched the Kentucky Fried Chicken place, the pistol in my hand and rain runnin' down the windshield. The door came open, and Miralee walked out. Walkin' fast, too. My heart started hammerin'. She was comin' back to the car. I didn't want to hear what she was gonna tell me, not really. I wasn't ready for it. But then she slid back under the steerin' wheel, her black hair drenched, and she looked at me and said, "It's him. I swear to G.o.d it is." Her voice was steady, not nervous at all. She was ready, even if I wasn't. "He's buyin' two buckets of chicken, and he'll be out in a minute or two. Lord, he's gotten so fat!"

"It's not him," I said. "No way."

"I heard his voice. He tried to disguise it, and he sounds like he's been garglin' with gla.s.s, but I'd know that voice anywhere." She nodded, her mind made up. "It's him, all right. When he comes out the door, you go get him." She turned the key, and the noise of the engine firin' made me jump. "Can you believe it?" Miralee asked me, her knuckles bleachin' white as she gripped the wheel. "That sumb.i.t.c.h pretends to be dead for goin' on ten years, and he shows up just when our business is gettin' good!" She revved the engine, and the Chevy shook like a bull about to charge.

And that was the point, of course. That was why we were sittin' out there in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken place, and me with a gun in my hand. We'd been hauntin' that parkin' lot for over a week, waitin' for the King to show up. Stalkin' him, I guess you might say. We had to kill him. Had to. See, we were makin' almost a thousand scoots a week soul-channelin' the King into our livin' room, and then all of a sudden the Midnite Tattler reports that a Zippy Mart clerk in Eustace says Elvis walked in at three o'clock in the mornin' and bought an armload of Little Debbie cakes and a six-pack of Dr. Pepper, and that he winked at her and left hummin' "My Way." She said he'd changed a lot, of course, but she was an Elvis fan and could see it was him right off. Not long after that, a fella says he was huntin' squirrels in the woods north of Eustace when he comes face-to-face with the King p.i.s.sin' in the bushes. Said Elvis squawled and took off like Bigfoot, and that he moved mighty fast for a man his size. Well, it wasn't long before other folks said they'd seen Elvis too, and by G.o.d if some agent fella from New York didn't go on a TV show and tell the world he'd been communicatin' with Elvis over the phone for the last two months, that the King had been hidin' out and now he wanted to get back into show business, write a book, and star in a movie of his life and all.

You can guess what happened to our business. How can you soul-channel Elvis if he's still alive? Folks wanted their money back, and some of 'em even said they were gonna put the law on us. And while all that was goin' on, the reporters were swarmin' all over Eustace tryin' to hunt the King down. Miralee and me both knew a stone-cold fact: if the reporters found Elvis, we were fit to be flushed.

Where to look was the problem. I remembered somethin' from one of the tapes. Elvis was a young fella, sharp and lean as a blade, and he was about to go over to Europe in the Army. Reporter asked him what he was gonna miss most, and he drawled it with a sneer: "Southern fried chicken."

We knew that sooner or later, if the King was anywhere near Eustace, he'd make a late-night run on the only Kentucky Fried Chicken place in twenty miles.

But with that pistol in my hand and murder on my mind, I hoped I'd been wrong. I hoped Miralee was wrong too, but she's got a good eye. She sure as h.e.l.l would know Elvis if she saw him, even if he did weigh near three hundred pounds.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken's front door opened, and the King waddled out into the rain with his booty of buckets.

I saw it, then. The way he walked. Movin' his shoulders. Somethin' you just can't explain. Somethin'... kingly. Like he owned the world, and everybody else was just rentin' s.p.a.ce. Seein' him in the flesh, even that big and all, froze me. I said, "Miralee, that's not him," because I didn't want it to be. She said, "Go get him," and she gave me a shove.

He was headin' to a beat-up rust-bucket of a brown Cadillac. The rain was fallin' harder, and when I got out of the Chevy the rain pelted my shoulders. I had the pistol clenched in my hand, and I started walkin' toward the King.

"Hurry!" Miralee urged.

Elvis must've heard. He stopped dead, holdin' onto his buckets. He looked at me, his face hidden under the mildewed cowboy hat. I could tell he had three or four chins. I lifted the gun, and I said, "Into the car and get come on."

"Huh?" That voice. Oh lord, that voice.

I got my tongue untangled on the next try. "Come on and get into the car!" I motioned toward the Chevy.

"I ain't n.o.body!" he said, clingin' to his buckets so hard they were startin' to bust open at the seams and fried chicken pieces were squeezin' out. "You don't know me! I ain't n.o.body!"

"I know who you are," I said, and I meant it.

The bottom popped out of one of his buckets, and chicken wings fell out.

I pulled the hammer back. "Let's go," I told him. My hand was shakin' so hard I'm surprised the gun didn't go off right then and there. The King lifted his thick arms and dropped the buckets, and he walked over fried chicken toward Miralee and the Chevy. I opened the back door for him and he squeezed in, then I climbed in right after him. Miralee hit the gas as soon as the door was closed, and we headed out of the parkin' lot.

"We got him!" Miralee said, merrily. "We got that big sumb.i.t.c.h, didn't we!" She drove us over a curb and I heard the King's teeth click together. "We got him, sure did!"

"We got him!" I answered, half about to laugh and half about to cry. "Right here in the car he sits!" I poked him in the belly with the gun's barrel, just to make sure he was real, and my arm almost sank wrist-deep in flab. Elvis smelled like a pigpen, and he had a gray beard that didn't hide his triple chins. His clothes-blue jeans, a red checked shirt and that brown overcoat-were blotched with food stains. He breathed like a bellows, and I swear he made the whole car tilt slightly to one side.

"I ain't n.o.body," Elvis said. "I ain't n.o.body at all, mister."

"You're Elvis Presley and I got a d.a.m.n gun in your belly!" I hollered at him. "You been hidin' and pretendin'

you're dead and I got a good soul-channelin' business goin' and then you decide to come back to life so where does that leave me, huh?"

"Where does that leave us?" Miralee corrected, driving through the rain. The wipers were sluggish, and they made a skreeking sound across the gla.s.s. We'd been plannin' on buyin' us a new BMW when we had thirty thousand dollars saved up.

"I ain't no-" He stopped, 'cause he must've known it was no use. He just sat starin' at nothin', his head t.i.tled forward. "I knew it couldn't be forever," he said, quiet-like. He shook his head. "Knew it couldn't be." He looked at me; I couldn't see his eyes under that hat, but I knew they must still be keen. I knew his stare could still strip the bark off a tree; I felt its power, directed right at me. Elvis said, "What're ya'll plannin' on doin' with me?"

"We're gonna kill you," Miralee told him, as brightly as you please. "Take you out to the woods and kill you. Bury you deep, too." I flinched a little, because I was thinkin' of how big the hole would have to be. We had a pickaxe and a shovel in the trunk. "You wanted to be dead, didn't you?" she asked. "Well, we're gonna help you out." I have to say, I thought it was pretty disrespectful puttin' it this way to the King. I mean, I was ready to kill him and all, but... I was still respectful. The King was fat and he smelled like a goat, but he was still the King. Until I got around to killin' him, I mean.

Elvis just sat there, and didn't say a word.

Miralee suddenly hollered and swerved the wheel, 'cause a van with ABC NEWS on the side came out of the rain and almost knocked us off the road. A few seconds later, a car with CBS NEWS and a blue blinker on it swept past us, movin' fast. Like I said, the reporters were crawlin' all over Eustace, tryin' to hunt Elvis down. We were headin' out of town to find a good spot in the woods, but a red light caught us before we got more than a mile away from the Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. Miralee pulled up beside a white station wagon that had somethin' written on the pa.s.senger door. I saw what it was: THE GERALDO RIVERA SHOW.