Last Call (Last Call 1)

He squinted across the waves at a rocky little island a couple of miles away, and then looked at his Lake Mead map, folded to show Boulder Basin. Deadman's Island, the place was called. That sounded appropriate.

He turned the wheel, then stepped on the gas. The acceleration pushed him back into the seat, and as he straightened out of the turn, the wind threw the high rooster tail of spray out ahead of him, and heavy drops of water stung his face and knocked his black hair down onto his forehead.

He dug out his comb as he steered one-handed, and he swept the hair back up where it belonged. From now until Easter, physical perfection was going to be absolutely essential.

The man who takes the throne can have no flaws.

He circled the island in a series of jackrabbit starts, and on the far side he found a little rocky beach with no picnickers on it. He got in fairly close and then threw over the cinder-block that was the anchor.

Reluctantly he picked up the box, then climbed over the gunwale and waded ashore through the cold water, holding the box high.

In ancient Alexandria, Phoenicians had enacted the annual death of Tammuz by throwing a papyrus head into the sea, and seven days later the summer current invariably left the head at Byblos, where they'd fish it out and celebrate the god's resurrection. It was during the interval when the head was in the sea that the location and identity and even the existence of the fertility god were in doubt.

These next two weeks, from this April Fool's Day until Easter, would be the tricky period this cycle, and Pogue was determined that it would be his own head—symbolically—that would be taken out of the water on Easter Sunday.

Max's poor severed head was wearing Pogue's Ray-Bans and had one of Pogue's ties knotted around the stump of its neck, and of course Max had shared Pogue's and Nardie's dietary restrictions, eating no red meat nor anything that had been cooked in an iron pan and drinking no alcohol. That was why Pogue had not been able to simply behead some random tourist for this. The head had to be the closest possible representation of Pogue's own.

His hands were shaking. He wanted to open the box and reknot the tie. Max had never learned how to tie one, and Pogue could remember a dozen occasions when Max had brought a tie to him, and Pogue had had to tie it around his own neck and then loosen it and pull it off over his head and give it to his friend.

When I knotted the tie for him this morning at dawn beside Boulder Highway, he thought now, that was the last time I'll ever do that chore for him.

He clenched his teeth and took a deep breath.

Christ, he told himself, never mind, get the box in the water and moor the line somewhere where no goddamn drunk tourists will find it during the next two weeks, and get the hell out of here.

He looked around among the rocks and the manzanita bushes for a good spot, and he noticed the flock of swallows out over the lake.

He assumed they were swallows. They had the individual darting flight patterns of those birds, certainly—but something was wrong about their wings. And there were other flocks, he now noticed, lots of them, further away. He shaded his eyes to look at the flying things.

Then his stomach went cold, and sweat sprang out on his forehead.

They were bats.

Bats, he thought dazedly—but bats don't ever come out during the day. What're they, crazy, rabid? Is something going on?

He looked away, to see where they might be headed, and he saw that the sky to the south, too, was peppered with the same jiggling dots.

They're coming here. To this little island, from goddamn everywhere.

He scrambled along the little shoreline to a cluster of rocks, and he tossed the gleaming box out over the water; it splashed in while he was tying the end of the line around a half-submerged rock.

And then shadows were whirling around his feet like spots before his eyes. The bats were circling low overhead, silent except for the clatter of their leather wings, and more were coming in from everywhere. The battering wind of their wings disarranged his hair.

He looked up in horror. The furry, toothy little faces flashing past, the bright round eyes were all staring at him.

Something was splashing furiously in the water now, and in panic he swung his head toward it.

The lake water was boiling where he had thrown the box in, and then, impossibly, the heavy box bobbed to the surface, spinning and glittering on the turbulence.

The lake is rejecting it, he thought dazedly. Is that a bunch of fish doing that, or has the water changed its density to keep from enclosing the head?

The clatter of the bats' wings was louder, closer, and he thought he could smell them, a smell like death.

Just run, he told himself.

They've beaten you here today.