Free Blue World by Robert R. McCammon Page B

can’t be the only ones!”
    “I don’t know about that.” Spence drew on his cigarette one last time and flicked the butt 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 toward 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 realized he was doing it with his bloody 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 bloody 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 7-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 toward 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 color set, and Brad realized 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 gray suit and the other in a wine-red dress--leaning crookedly over a news desk at center 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 hoarse 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 7-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 7Eleven’s plate-glass 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 glass, 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