Free Swan Song by Robert McCammon

yellow bug!
    He dropped the mangled remnant into a wastebasket, then wiped the iridescent yellow sparkle from his palm onto his khakis and went back to the living room. Schorr was saying goodnight, and the other two men had just arrived with the luggage and Roland’s computer gear.
    “Orientation at 0800, folks!” Schorr said. “See you there!”
    “Great,” Phil Croninger said excitedly.
    “Great.” Elise’s voice delivered the jab of sarcasm. Sergeant Schorr, smile still locked in place, left Number Sixteen. But the smile disappeared as he stepped into the electric cart, and his mouth became a grim, rigid line. He turned the cart around and raced back to the area where the rubble lay on the floor, and he told the cleanup crew that they’d better move their asses to patch those cracks-and this time keep them patched-before the whole goddamned section fell apart.

Burning Spears
    The Man Who Liked Movies /
Judgment Day /
The Greeter /
Underground Boys /
Discipline and Control Makes the Man /
Charter/

Six - [Burning Spears]
    July 17 4:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
    New York City
    “He’s still in there, ain’t he?” the black woman with orange hair asked in a whisper, and the Hispanic boy behind the candy counter nodded.
    “Listen!” the boy, whose name was Emiliano Sanchez, said, and his dark eyes widened.
    From beyond the faded red curtains that led into the auditorium of the Empire State Theater on Forty-Second Street there came a laugh. It was a sound someone with a slashed throat might have made. The sound of it grew louder and higher, and Emiliano put his hands to his ears; the laughter had reminded him of a locomotive whistle and a child’s shriek, and for a few seconds he was back in time, eight years old and living in Mexico City, witnessing his kid brother being struck and killed by a freight train.
    Cecily stared at him, and as the laughter rose in volume she heard a girl’s scream in it, and she was fourteen years old and lying on the abortionist’s table as the job was done. The vision was gone in an instant, and the laughter began to fade. “Jesus Christ!” Cecily managed to say, whispering again. “What’s that bastard smokin’?”
    “I been listenin’ to that since midnight,” he told her. His shift had started at twelve and would continue until eight. “You ever hear anythin’ like it?”
    “He alone in there?”
    “Yeah. Few people come in, but they couldn’t take it neither. Man, you shoulda seen their faces when they come out! Give you the creeps!”
    “Shit, man!” Cecily said. She was the ticket-seller and worked in the booth out front. “I couldn’t stand to sit through two minutes of that movie, all them dead folks and such! Lordy, I sold that guy his ticket three shows ago!”
    “He come out, bought a large Coke and buttered popcorn. Tipped me a buck. But I tell you, I almost didn’t wanna touch the money. It looked… greasy or somethin’.”
    “Bastard’s prob’ly playin’ with hisself in there. Prob’ly lookin’ at all them dead, messed-up faces and playin’ with hisself! Somebody ought to go in there and tell him to-”
    The laughter swelled again. Emiliano flinched; the noise now reminded him of the cry of a boy he’d once gut-stabbed in a knife fight. The laughter broke and burbled, became a soft cooing that made Cecily think of the sounds the addicts made in the shooting gallery she frequented. Her face was frozen until the laughter went away, and then she said, “I believe I’ve got things to do.” She turned away and hurried to the ticket booth, where she locked the door. She’d figured that the guy inside the theater was going to be weird when she saw him: He was a big, husky Swedish-looking man with curly blond hair, milk-white skin and eyes like cigarette burns. As he bought his ticket he’d stared notes through her and never said a word. Weird, she thought, and she picked up her People magazine with trembling fingers.
    Come on, eight