The Stratocaster burned my fingers, my whole body rejecting the music we were making, but still I couldn't stop.
Screams filled the nightclub now. More of the crowd fought to scramble over one another for safety, trying to avoid the snapping maws of the beast. It grew closer and closer to us.
And then angels starting falling.
They dropped from the ceiling on thin filaments, cables that sparkled in the spotlights, descending toward the creature and onto the stage. One angel swung to the top of each set of amplifiers, swords flashing in their hands. They rappelled down the stacks, stabbing each speaker right in its center, every thrust bringing forth a high-pitched shriek from the equipment - a squealing counterpoint to the Big Riff.
Dozens of them dropped onto the beast and into the crowd, pushing people away. They brought the creature to a halt, hacking with swords and stabbing with long, telescoping spears. Its cries of pain joined the squawking of the amplifiers, until the music finally began to stumble...
Minerva's voice faltered, and the spell was shattered.
I broke free, pulling the Stratocaster's strap from my shoulder and grabbing the guitar by its neck, despising it with every fiber of my being. I raised it over my head and swung it down against the stage, smashing it again and again, its strings snapping, its broken neck twisting like a dying chicken's. The guitar buzzed and squeaked out a last few tuneless notes, its death cries leaking from the surviving amps.
Around me, the others had ground to a halt. In tears, Alana Ray threw her sticks aside, kicking wildly at her paint buckets. Zahler just stood there openmouthed, staring at the battle on the nightclub floor. I couldn't look at Minerva anymore.
Stepping back from the broken guitar, my hands bent into claws, I started to stomp at it with my boots. It peeped and squawked.
Then an angel landed on the stage in front of me, dressed in commando black, trailing a thin cable from her waist. She held a small object in one hand.
I recognized her: Lace.
I turned to run, to escape her and everything else: this band, this music, the monstrous thing we'd called up. But after a few steps, before I'd even reached the edge of the stage, she'd caught up with me, grabbing my arm and spinning me around, her needle flashing in the spotlights.
I felt a pinprick at my neck, then her arms supporting me.
"Say good night, Moz," Lace said.
The sound of my own name almost made me vomit, and then nausea and pain melted into darkness.
PART VI
THE TOUR
There has never been a better time for a pandemic.
Airplanes can carry people across the globe in a single day, and half a billion people fly every year. Cities are far larger and more crowded than at any point in history.
The last great disease was Spanish flu, which appeared at the end of World War I. (Pandemics love wars.) It spread across the planet faster than any previous disease. Within one year, one billion people were infected, a third of the world's population. Its spread was so frighteningly quick that one U.S. town outlawed shaking hands.
And all this was before airplanes could fly across oceans, before most people owned a car. These days, any pandemic would travel much, much faster. We've got it all these days: dense cities, instant transportation, and all the wars you could want. For the worms, that's motive, means, and opportunity.
When the last days come, they will come quickly.
NIGHT MAYOR TAPES
END HERE.
26. HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS
- MINERVA-
The smelly angels took us all away.
I tried to explain to them that I was fine - had been for weeks - and that Zahler, Pearl, and Alana Ray weren't even infected. But one look at sweaty, frothing, guitar-smashing Mozzy convinced them we were all insane.
That was the angels' big problem: they thought they knew everything.
I could have run. I was as fast and strong as them now - I could shatter bedroom doors with a single blow, after all. With the angels busy protecting a thousand bystanders and catching Astor Michaels and killing the giant worm that I'd called up (okay... oops), disappearing would have been a cinch.
But that would have meant leaving Moz and the others behind, and we really were a band now; I couldn't let them be kidnapped without me. So I let the angels stick me with their stupid needles...
And woke up all the way across the river in New Jersey. They'd put me in a locked room, a cross between a cheap hotel and a mental hospital. Nothing to do but watch the world fall apart on TV.
Smelly angels.
"We're very interested in you, Minerva."
"Really, Cal?" I batted my eyelashes. He was kind of handsome - in a boring, clean-cut way - and had a cute southern accent. Not as yummy as Mozzy, of course, but I liked how Cal turned pink when you flirted with him. "Then why don't you let me out of here? It's not like I'm dangerous, after all."
His eyes narrowed. Cal never wore sunglasses, like the other angels did. They were all infected, of course, and only sane because they took their meds. The angels had a big pill factory out here. No skulls or crucifixes on the walls, though - they were very scientific.
But Cal was different. He didn't need pills and smelled a little bit like Astor Michaels. Fellow freaks of nature.
"We can't let you go because we don't know what you are," Cal's girlfriend said.
I glared at her. Her name was Lace-short-for-Lacey, and she'd stuck Mozzy with her needle.
"But I'm cured. You can see that." They'd tried to give me their smelly angel medicine, but I was refusing it. Fresh garlic was enough for me now.
Cal scratched his head. "Yeah, you told us about your esoterica already. We're checking her out."
"You be nice to Luz," I warned. "She knows things."
"We know things too," he said.
Lace got all bossy then, hands on hips and voice too loud. "We've been around for centuries, cured a lot more peeps than Luz ever will. Your friend might know a few folk remedies, but the Watch has this stuff down to a science."
"Science, huh?" I ran one finger down the side of my neck, making Cal all squirmy. "So what am I, then?"
Lace frowned. "What you are is freaky."
"We've been watching Astor Michaels for a while now," Cal said. "We knew he was spreading the parasite, but this whole singing thing... It kind of caught us by surprise."
I didn't say how the worm had caught me by surprise too. I'd always felt it rumbling when we played, but I'd never thought it would come visit.