Chapter Twenty-Two

Disaster

Gus slammed on the brakes suddenly; the bus jolted violently as the brakes locked up; the tires screamed like mortally wounded horses, and then the bus swerved wildly---and tipped over.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the bus tipped with a drunken grace that would have done credit to Foster Brooks, rolled onto its right side---and everyone and everything inside it went flying.

The entire world disintegrated into roaring and screeching and crashing and yells of anger and shrieks of fright as the bus skidded along the roadway on its side; the windows on the underside of the bus shattered on contact with the asphalt, sending shards of glass flying everywhere. And above it all improbably, I could hear Razor's voice calling out, "All right!! A wreck!!"

He sounded like a kid on a roller coaster, of all things. I decided right then that I was going to have to see to getting him put away at our earliest convenience; the man was totally out of his mind.

I didn't have time to make any other decisions, or even think any other thoughts, because Wish came flying out of our bunk just then and caught me squarely in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me completely. My vision greyed out almost to the point of blackout; the roaring in my ears and head drowned out the sound of the crash going on around me for an excruciatingly long moment. I was in no condition to do anything to help myself or my wife, or even think of doing anything but try to get air into my lungs again!

Just about the time I began to recover, I became aware of Wish struggling a little ways away from me, all tangled up in something that looked like giant spaghetti, more squawking in indignation than squealing in fright---and of someone looming over me.

It was Tommy…and then again, it wasn't Tommy. For starters, his irises were completely black. And the look on his face was no longer human; it was more that of some savage, predatory creature on the prowl for blood and red meat. I looked for his shield pendant---and a terrible chill hit me in the pit of my stomach; it was gone. It must have gotten knocked off him during the crash---and when he'd been thrown from his bunk, he'd been thrown free of the shield coils hidden under his mattress as well. He'd been left with no defense, and Castevet had gotten to him again…and this time, he'd taken Tommy over completely.

Tommy/Castevet snarled - it sounded even more animalistic than his expression looked - and reached for me, fingers clawed, going for my throat. I grabbed for my own shield pendant; as desperately winded as I was, I was in no condition to fight back.

But the pendant was gone; like Tommy's, it had gotten lost during the crash. My heart - and my stomach - sank. I was in big trouble; as weak as Tommy had been from Castevet's attack, he was as much stronger than normal, now, driven by Castevet's power. His fingers clamped around my throat, cutting my air off completely. I was already starved for oxygen from getting the wind knocked out of me during the crash; now I was getting no oxygen into my system at all, and the lights were going out on me again.

It was kill or be killed; I had no choice but to stop him any way I could, if I were to survive. Regretfully, I did the only thing I could think of, at the time; I brought the heel of my right hand up as hard as I could, right into the bridge of Tommy's nose.

It's a killing blow; it drives the bone at the bridge of the nose up into the brain, causing instant death. I knew that if it worked I might lose Wish forever, because it would mean that I'd killed her "brother", even if it were in self-defense---but if Castevet killed me, judging by what the Professor had told me, the others would have no chance against the monster we were all up against. I still had no idea what it was I was supposed to do that might result in Castevet's defeat, but if the monstrosity controlling Tommy killed me, here and now, we'd never find out…and Castevet would probably be free to do damage that the world might never recover from.

But either I was far too weak by then to put any force into the blow, or Castevet had somehow rendered Tommy's body abnormally immune to harm; my hand bounced off Tommy's nose as if it were made of solid rock---and Tommy didn't so much as blink in response to the blow.

It looked like I was done for; I didn't have enough strength left to even raise my hand again; worse yet, that dark, arctic-clawed thing that had attacked me the day before struck again, and this time it was stronger---far stronger. It burrowed into my mind, threatening to rip my consciousness to quivering, bleeding bits; Tommy's voice, as bestial as the growl it had sounded the moment before, burrowed in along with it: "Alex! This time I have you---forever!!"

I was losing myself---losing my awareness---losing my soul; I was being absorbed by Castevet, through Tommy; I was dying.

And then, with a suddenness that was just as shocking as the attack, the attack ceased; his hands were gone from my throat, and the dark tentacles were gone from my mind. I gasped for air desperately, straining to get oxygen back into my lungs; the roaring in my head nearly drowned out the wild, terrible shriek that came from It. I struggled to clear my vision, and after what felt like hours, finally succeeded just enough to be able to make out what was going on around me.

It was backing away across the wreckage of the overturned bus's interior, shrieking as if a mountain lion were disemboweling it and struggling frantically with that spaghetti-stuff I'd seen Wish all tangled up in.

I blinked hard, struggling to clear my vision a little more; I finally recognized the spaghetti-stuff it was struggling with…the shield coil that had been hidden under Tommy's mattress! It had obviously been thrown free of Tommy's bunk during the crash, and it'd gotten tangled around Wish after she'd landed on me. Apparently she'd managed to get loose of it and had thrown it onto It in order to get it off me.

I knew the protective compound was powerful, But I'd had no idea it could do things like that to the dark forces in the world!

It managed to throw the shield coil off; it hesitated, perched atop an overturned seat, panting like a wounded animal, those jet-black eyes glaring down at us; it gathered itself to spring at us again…

…and the skidding bus went clear off the road and slammed into - and through - something.

The impact threw It from its perch and into something back behind it out of my line of sight. I heard a heavy thud, and another bestial shriek from the thing Tommy had become, and then it all got lost in the bus sliding down a slope to the tune of a cacophony that left me - and probably everyone else on the bus - half-deaf.

The bus rolled, once, and came to rest on its right side again…and from the looks of it, there wasn't an intact window left in the vehicle anywhere. Somehow, Wish was on top of me, holding on for dear life.

It appeared from nowhere farther up toward the front of the bus, leaped to the top of a pile of wreckage, snarled at me and Wish, leaped for the broken window directly above it and vanished into the world outside.

Razor struggled up out of the wreckage, bleated, "Tommy! Come back!"---and scrambled up toward the broken window after him.

Wish and I staggered to our feet and checked one another over thoroughly. Once each of us was certain that the other half of us was okay, we went looking for the others.

By the grace of God, it turned out no one had been seriously hurt. We found Gus, our driver, in a heap in the door well, struggling to get to his feet. He was bleeding from a cut over his left eye, and still a little cross-eyed and dazed, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. We got him to his feet and Wish placed her hands on each side of his head; the aura around her hands went a brilliant gold for a moment.

When the gold light around them faded away and her aura had returned to normal, the bleeding had stopped and his eyes were clearing.

I'd only seen her do that once before, the day before our wedding, when a bird had crashed into her hotel-room window. I'd chanced to be there at the time, making final plans with her; we'd heard the thump and had gone to see what had happened, and had found a wren lying on the ledge outside the window, dazed by the impact and flapping about weakly. I'd managed to get the window open and Wish had grabbed the poor little thing before it'd fallen off and ended up as a very small street pizza…and Wish had done that thing with the aura around her hands.

The wren had gone still, blinked a few times in obvious surprise, then got to its feet and looked up at her, totally confused. She'd smiled down at the little thing, stroked its head gently, just once, then put it down on the window ledge. There'd been no signs of unsteadiness about it; it'd looked up at us, chirped once, as if thanking us---then turned and fluttered away, apparently completely recovered.

I glanced up at her and tapped the side of my head - the gesture was becoming our silent shorthand for Tune in; we need to talk privately - and asked, "Why didn't you do that with Tommy when Castevet first got to him?"

She shook her head grimly and sighed. "The damage Nicodemus has done to him is psychic; the symptoms he displays are just the physical results of what's been done to him. Trying this on Tommy would have been useless; treating the symptoms instead of the disease works for some illnesses, but it's useless against this type of problem. The only way to save Tommy is to stop Nicodemus…or get him to lose interest in him, somehow."

I sighed in turn and helped Gus up out of the door well. As he got clear of the door, I realized that even if we managed to get the bus upright again, we wouldn't be leaving by that particular means; the door had been crushed so badly that is was jammed shut. The only other way out was the emergency exit, assuming it was still operational---or to crawl out one of the broken windows, the way Razor had.

Once we had Gus to a seat, of sorts, I asked, "Hey, man---what happened? Why are we out in the boonies, instead of on the Interstate---and what happened to the bus?"

He shook his head, looking as if he were trapped in a nightmare, and mumbled, "Ran into a detour sixty miles north o' New Orlins---had t' take th' side roads. Started gettin' drowsy 'bout a mile back, 'n drifted off for a few seconds."

His expression went odd, and he added, "I was dreamin' 'bout a three-eyed Indian farmer, for a minute, there."

Wish and I traded surprised looks; she recognized the description of the man milking the cow in the dream I'd told her about.

"I jerked myself out of it, 'n saw some guy pop in from outta nowhere onto th' road right in front o' us; I hadda swerve hard t' keep fr'm hittin' 'im."

Wish and I traded grim looks, this time. Wish prompted, "What did this man look like?"

He shrugged. "Didn't get a real good look at 'im, but he was dark---black hair, black clothes…I swear, his eyes looked white!"

I nodded to Wish and tapped the side of my head again. "Castevet. Probably engineered the detour, and his drowsiness too."

She nodded agreement. "Tommy's condition agrees with that. Nicodemus can cast sleep on people…it's a good way to engineer an accident; make Gus drowse off for a moment, then let him recover just in time to see him appear directly in front of the bus. Gus couldn't help but react violently---and run the bus right off the road. I hate to say this, but it looks like Nicodemus is making his move, now."

Gus didn't notice the exchange, of course; he rambled on, "Funny thing, though---just as I swerved, he turned around, sudden-like, 'n looked off to one side---'n he looked surprised, 'n then mad about somethin'. 'N then he just sorta faded out, like someone turnin' off an old TV set."

Wish grabbed my arm and pulled me away from him. In a low, urgent tone she commented, "Dad and the others must have found Nicodemus's power base, and sabotaged it. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause Nicodemus to act the way Gus described."

I grunted, "Let us pray."….and went to see if the cellular phone was still operational.

It was---just barely. I managed to raise 911 and report the wreck. Unfortunately, I'd just managed to give the emergency operator a very general description of our location when the phone went dead. I stared at the phone in dismay, thinking: Wonderful; all I can do now is hope I managed to get enough information across to him for him to send searchers to the right area; from what I can see of the area outside, we're out in the middle of nowhere, and the chances of someone just happening by and finding us are probably somewhere between slim and none.

At that point all we could do was gather up whatever first-aid supplies we could find in the wreckage, patch up our injuries - thankfully, they were all minor ones - and then find a way out of the bus.

While rooting around for the first-aid kit, I managed to locate a shield pendant. I don't know if it was mine or one of the spares, but it didn't matter…it was a shield pendant, and that was what was important. Wish had somehow managed to keep hers on her during the crash, so I didn't have to go looking for that, too - but I couldn't find any more. If we managed to find Tommy again and Castevet was still in control of him, we were going to need something to get him free of that monster's clutches---so I scooped up the tangled remains of the shield coil and brought it along. It had ruptured in a couple of places and the compound inside was pouring out, but I managed to tie the breaks in the plastic tubing off to keep from losing any more of it. At least the compound hadn't gotten wet; for reasons no one seems to understand, the shield compound becomes useless if water gets to it; it has to be dried out completely in order to become effective again.

I was also lucky enough to find Rocky, apparently uninjured, but crouching under chunks of wreckage, totally freaked out by what had just happened, and it took some doing to locate his carrier, calm him down and coax him out of hiding and into it. At least he was safe; the question was, were the rest of us…?

Fortunately, the emergency exit at the rear of the bus was operational; we had to do a little kicking at it to get it free, but at least we weren't forced to climb out through the windows and risk slicing ourselves to bloody pieces on all that broken glass.

We took shelter, human and feline alike, under a stand of trees a hundred feet from the bus; the last thing we needed was a fuel leak sending the bus up in flames and taking all of us with it because we were too close.

From the outside, the damage was a lot more obvious; the bus had gone off the road, plowed through a wood-rail fence, slid down an embankment, and come to rest in a pasture. After all that, it looked more like a crumpled beer can than a bus.

A small herd of cows was clustered up against the far fence, eyes still rolling in terror, too frightened to get close enough to the bus to make a break for freedom through the opening it had made in the fence.

The equipment truck and roadies were nowhere to be seen. When Castevet had decoyed Gus off the Interstate, he'd managed to do it while the trailing truck was out of sight of the bus, and it was probably halfway to New Orleans by now, with everyone aboard wondering where the bus had disappeared to.

Miracle of miracles, the authorities arrived less than a half-hour later. We all huddled together in the late-morning light and watched as a pair of heavy-duty tow trucks wrestled with the bus, trying to get it upright again. Fortunately, the majority of the rear tires were still intact, so it was possible to tow the poor old thing away.

Since none of us was injured badly enough to warrant hospitalization - or even other medical care, that anyone could tell - the paramedics grudgingly gave us a clean bill of health and the ambulances left, empty. The police informed us that there was a small town just down the road; there was a diner there that we could wait at until proper transportation could be sent for us. They offered to ferry us there as soon as they could get another police car to the scene to provide the necessary passenger room.

While we waited, Nathan, our percussionist, leaned against an undamaged part of the fence and watched the cows; they'd at least settled down enough to go back to grazing again. It was nice that some aspect of the day seemed to have gotten back to normal…

Ron, our keyboard man, slumped against a tree, staring off at something just down the road. He finally stirred and asked, of no one in particular, "Hey---anyone know what 'Abime' means?"

I finally realized that what he'd been looking at was a road sign; it read, "Abime, Louisiana, 1 mile".

I thought back to my French classes in high school, groping around through my surviving - and very limited - vocabulary. Ah---got it. "It means 'abyss'."

He looked around at me glumly. "That means, like, a big pit, don't it?"

I nodded.

He smiled sourly and grunted, "It fits. If this ain't the pits, I don't know what it is."

He wandered over to climb up on the fence beside Nathan.