Free Blue World by Robert R. McCammon Page A

still obediently blinking yellow, a skeleton in jogging gear lay sprawled on the ground. Its Nike sneakers were too small for Brad’s feet, too large for Kelly’s. They kept going, and Kelly cried for a few minutes but then she hugged her doll tighter and stared straight ahead with eyes swollen almost shut.
    And then Brad heard it, and his heart pounded with fear again.
    Off in the fog somewhere.
    The sound of a phone ringing.
    Brad stopped. The phone kept on ringing, its sound thin and insistent.
    “Somebody’s calling,” Kelly said, and Brad realized she was standing right beside him. “My tel’phone number is
    -6949.“
    He took a step forward. Another, and another. Through the fog ahead of him he could make out the shape of a pay phone there on the corner of Dayton Street.
    The telephone kept on ringing, demanding an answer.
    Slowly Brad approached the pay phone. He stared at the receiver as if it might be a cobra rearing back to strike. He did not want to answer it, but his arm lifted and his hand reached toward that receiver, and he knew that if he heard that silken breathing and the metallic recorded voice on the other end, he might start screaming and never be able to stop.
    His hand closed around it. Started to lift it up.
    “Hey, buddy!” someone said. “I wouldn’t answer that if I was you.”
    Startled almost out of his skin, Brad whirled around.
    A young man was sitting on the curb across the street, smoking a cigarette, his legs stretched out before him. “I wouldn’t,” he cautioned.
    Brad was oddly shocked by the sight of a flesh-and-blood man, as if he’d already forgotten what one looked like. The young man was maybe in his early twenties, wearing scruffy jeans and a dark green shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had sandy-brown hair that hung to his shoulders, and he looked to have a couple of days’ growth of beard. He pulled on the cigarette and said, “Don’t pick it up, man. Doom City.”
    “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 damned 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. Till today, that is. Till 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 walking. Lot of poking around.“ His gaze rested on the little girl, then back to Brad. The pay phone 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 God… my God… what happened?”
    “Something tore,” Spence said tonelessly. “Ripped open. Something 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