Skeletons Read Online Free Page B

bus.”
    â€œI'm proud to know you, Victor."
    "Go," he said.
    He boosted me up off his shoulders, holding my legs up with his strong hands while I grasped and then held the top of the grating hole. I pulled myself out. When I looked down, he had already gone. I heard his retreating footsteps down the tunnel.
    I was indeed under the stage; and there, unbelievably, was Jon Roberts when I emerged, pacing in front of a shrinking cordon of soldiers, the still-clear stage behind him.
    "My God, I don't believe it!" he said, hugging me. "Where—"
    "There's no time," I said. "Are any of the guest speakers still here?"
    "Gone," he said. "They fled when the first shooting started. They were sure the Soviets had decided to turn this into another Tienanmen Square. I still don't know what the hell's going on. But I decided to stick it out. There's all kinds of rumors, but the army guys look as scared as anybody." He laughed. "Some jerk even said the place was surrounded by zombies."
    Before I could answer, he went on. "Look," he said, taking hold of my arm and steering me toward the steps leading up to the stage, "I think I've got the main mike working now. You're the only one who can calm them down, Peter."
    Another mortar round went off, landing on the far side of the square. Jon flinched, then looked hard into my face. "Do it," he said.
    Never feeling more helpless, or more false in my thirty-five years, I walked slowly to the center of the stage, watching Jon until he had checked a group of cables, finding two he wanted and connecting them, and gave me a signal.
    "Please," I said. Immediately there was some reaction from the crowd in front of me. Eyes turned to the stage. Miraculously, the shelling had stopped. The wave of attention spread, and now I felt that rush of purpose I had so often felt before crowds, a Svengali-like power, sweep through me and over them. Much of the screaming stopped, and I saw people bend to help their neighbors up.
    "Please help those beside you," I said.
    The injured were carried toward the back of the crowd. Miraculously, there was near silence.
    "Today was to be a great day—" I began. But that was as far as I ever got, for up around us on the buildings and Kremlin wall surrounding Red Square I saw a horrible sight. A line of white skeletons, shoulder to shoulder, rose as one. Now the meaning of the cessation of shelling became evident.
    The army had been defeated.
    Jon ran to me across the stage. "Peter—" he said, then looked up. "My God, what is it? Is this some sort of joke?" He put his hand on my shoulder, and at that moment a shot rang out. I even saw the rifle from which it came, the puff of smoke from the barrel of a gun borne by a skeleton directly across the square.
    I felt a splash against my face and was sure I was hit. But in an instant of recognition I realized that it was Jon's blood that had hit me. His eyes were wide with surprise even as he collapsed, the lower part of his face torn away. He said nothing and dropped, falling from the stage.
    I had seen death before, had seen it worse than this. But now I was paralyzed. The crowd had yet to react, and I knew I must say something to them, stand here even if it meant my life. But even as the words froze in my throat there was a sound from behind and above me. I, along with all the others in the square, turned my attention to the balcony of the Kremlin, from where so many Soviet leaders had reviewed their troops and spoken to their people. A loud, booming voice, a Russian voice, now came from there, commanding attention.
    "Silence!"
    An instant thought went through me: that this was, after all, a trick of the Soviet establishment; that all of these skeletons rising from their graves were tricks of technology, weapons to defeat the democratization we all, Jon and I and all the others who professed so highly to believe in it, thought was inevitable here and all throughout the world. Perhaps the totalitarian regimes had their