by Anthony Izzo
He fell to the ground screaming, beating at the flames.
Rafferty left Carl’s flaming body and hurried out the front door.
He looked back, seeing the flames spread across a throw rug and to the magazine rack, whose contents would provide more fuel for the fire. If he were lucky, maybe the flames would get to the gas tanks buried under the pumps, and the place would go up like the Fourth of July.
Jimbo’s place was gone. The old coot dead. That served him right for ever messing with Rafferty.
He accelerated around the back of the station, the night air rushing over his body, making him tingle. He hopped a fence and cut diagonally through a yard with a small pool and swing set, jumped another fence, and bolted down a driveway.
He was being especially ballsy, running naked through yards back to his patrol car, but tonight he felt invincible.
He had survived bullet wounds that would’ve buried a man, and now he felt unstoppable. So what if someone saw him running through yards? As far as he was concerned, no one could touch him. All that worrying about being found out by Outsiders and sneaking around was useless. His kind was the superior race, and they didn’t need to worry about humans anymore.
After taking the Perski girl, her mother and the Reese bitch, he had changed back into human form and elected to leave his clothes off when he took care of Carl. He wanted to see the look on the little punk’s face when he showed up naked. It was priceless.
Now, he knifed across a front lawn, feeling the same exhilaration a big cat must feel when on a hunt.
His patrol car was in sight, and he leapt over the hood, landing squarely. He got into the car and closed his eyes, relishing the night’s work.
A murder witness was out of the way, the murder victim’s mother was taken care of, and he had removed Carl, something he’d been wanting to do for a long time. His officers and other volunteers were taking care of the humans in the park who had stopped to stare at Carla Reese’s body. They would disappear, and their homes would be burned to the ground.
If anyone wanted to know what happened, they could come and see him. He didn’t care. The Harvest was soon, and the Outsiders who lived in town would be slaughtered, so let them come and see him.
He felt like he was in control again. The only thing left was for Clarence to find that cabin where Jill and Matt were staying. Then his remaining problems would end.
Donna had waited for Jill’s return call. Her phone rang at six in the morning, the day after Jill had said they’d killed Rafferty. Jill had given Donna directions to the cabin and now she cruised down the expressway, both sides lined with trees. Hopefully the cabin wasn’t much farther. She hated driving in the boonies.
She was a city girl, born and bred, and being out in the country like this was the equivalent of landing on Jupiter. Marshall was about as far from the city as she wanted to get, being twenty miles away from Buffalo. It was a small village, with a population just over ten thousand, most of them wealthy.
Now she was on her way into the heart of the country, suspended from work and dealing with movie monsters living in a town not thirty miles from her home. She felt she had to join the fight against them (if there was going to be one) and take action to avenge Rhonda’s death.
Her Colt Anaconda rested on the seat next to her, the backup weapon to her automatic, lost in the fire. It was a .44 Magnum, and after seeing that thing chasing her through the house, she had her doubts about even a .44 being able to do much damage to one of them.
She got off the 400 at Route 16 and nearly passed the dirt road; she had to screech the brakes and crank the wheel to make the turn.
She parked behind a red Chevy pickup, holstered the Colt and approached the front door. The grass had a filmy frost on it, and the cabin was draped in shadows. She was surprised to find herself shivering on the last day of August.
She knocked on the door and took a step back.
A boyishly handsome guy opened the door, pointing a piece at her. He also had a large hunting knife in a sheath on his belt.
“That an automatic in your hand or you just glad to see me?” she said. “I’m Donna Ricci.”
He laughed and the ice was broken. He lowered the weapon and invited her inside.
“Sorry for the greeting, but we can’t be too careful.”
“No problem.”
Jill sat on the bed, pulling on socks.
“Donna, this is Matt Crowe,” she said.
She shook his hand.
Matt said, “Jill tells me you saw one of them.”
“I did more than saw it. The son of a bitch chased me.”
“What did it look like?”
“Tall. Yellowish eyes. Claws. Smelled like someone took a dump in a bucket of spoiled eggs.”
“That’s about right. You’re lucky you got away.”
“You’re familiar with Them?”
“All too.”
Jill stood up off the bed and slipped into sneakers. “They killed Matt’s family.”
“Rafferty was with them,” Matt said.
“I’m sorry to hear that. They got my sister-in-law too. That’s why I was in her house.”
“Who was it?”
“Some low-life junkie named Charles Dietrich. He must’ve been waiting for Rhonda when she got home,” Donna said.
Donna took off the light cotton jacket she was wearing, set it on the card table and then sat down. “I questioned Rafferty on what happened, but he gave me the runaround. So I tried checking things out for myself and wound up burning down my brother’s house.”
Jill joined her at the table.
“What does your brother think about all this?” Matt asked.
“I actually think he’s glad to be rid of her. He told me that this was a new beginning for him.”
Donna still felt a surge of acid in her stomach at the thought of the fight she had with Bob. “But that’s Bob for you. Diddling his assistant on the side.”
“That’s awful,” Jill said.
Donna pointed to Matt’s weapon. “So what kind of firepower you have? Those things are pretty damn strong.”
Matt held up the gun. It was an automatic, maybe a Beretta. “This is it, so far. But Harry’s supposed to be bringing us more.”
“Can he get his hands on any artillery? How about an M-1 tank?”
“Maybe some nukes,” Jill chimed in.
“Or how about a nuclear sub? We could blow the bastards back to the Stone Age.”
Matt threw up his hands. “You two are out of control.”
From outside came the sound of a car engine.
“That’s gotta be Harry. No more comments from the peanut gallery, okay?” Matt said.
“We promise,” Donna said.
“Scouts’ honor,” Jill said.
Donna liked the two of them already.
Matt opened the front door and watched the big Lincoln roll up the driveway, smooth and quiet. He expected Harry to stop, but instead he swerved the car to the right, drove around the two pickup trucks, ran over a big root and then pulled around the back of the cabin.
Turning toward the dirt trail, he gunned the engine, pulled down the trail and then backed up, nearly turning the picnic table into splinters. The guy needed a reverse alarm on his vehicle.
He got out of the Lincoln, brushing yellow crumbs off of his flannel shirt.
“Nice piece of driving,” Matt said.
“Good morning to you too.”
Donna and Jill came out to see what was going on. Matt introduced them both to Harry and they all shook hands and exchanged hellos
“Shit, I almost forgot,” Harry said.
Matt was puzzled.
The big man opened the driver’s side door and reached over the seat, producing a brown shopping bag. “Here we go. Gotta have breakfast.”
He thrust the bag at Matt, who opened it. Fresh blueberry muffins and a gallon of orange juice.
Donna took the bag from Matt. “I’ll take these in and
get some plates.”
“No sampling until we come in,” Matt said.
“Then you’d better hurry,” Donna said.
She disappeared around the front of the cabin.
Harry popped open the trunk, nodded toward Jill. “So this is the date you were going to bring for dinner? You’ve got excellent taste, Matt.”
“A one-man army and a flirt,” Jill said.
“Only the best for Matt Crowe. No non-pedigrees,” Matt said.
Jill whacked him on the arm.
“Here,” Harry said, and gave him a burlap sack. It had a round object in it that felt as heavy as a bowling ball.
“Jill, how about taking these in, please?”
Harry took out two Winchester Model 1300 Defender shotguns and handed them to Jill, who took them by the pumps, barrels pointing up. He then took out a wooden crate and Matt immediately smelled gasoline. There were a dozen dusty glass bottles stuffed with rags and filled with gasoline.
Molotov cocktails.
“You drove up here with those in your trunk? What if you had an accident?”
“If I didn’t die in Vietnam, I ain’t gonna die in no car wreck,” Harry scoffed. Then he hauled out the real goodies: an M-60 machine gun and an M-79 grenade launcher. He set those on the ground and told Matt to take the grenade launcher in the house and the M-60 upstairs.
“Upstairs?” Matt said.
“You didn’t notice it?”
“Can’t say I did.”
“I’ll show you later.”
Matt took the grenade launcher inside and returned for the M-60, while Harry pulled out two wooden crates, presumably full of ammunition. He also revealed two M-16 rifles with grenade launchers under the barrel.
“You got Jimmy Hoffa in there too?”
“You’d be surprised what’s been in this trunk.”
They hauled the M-60 and the crates inside and set them on the floor next to the table. Donna had washed a stack of plates and was drying the last one with a paper towel when they came in. She had also taken out four blue plastic cups and set them on the table.
“That’s some serious firepower,” Donna said.
“Yep,” Harry replied.
“Harry, Donna’s chief of police in Marshall,” Jill said.
“Well isn’t that just wonderful, a police officer. Do you have any ATF agents you want to introduce me to?”
“Relax,” Donna said. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Deal.”
They all sat down at the table and dug into the blueberry muffins and juice. They were slightly warm, sweet-tart and delicious.
Through a mouthful of blueberries, Harry said, “Let me tell you what I know. You’re in for a lollapalooza.”
The muffins were all but crumbs.
Harry leaned back in his chair, content, his hands folded on his belly. Matt took the plates and cups to the sink while the others settled in. Jill felt a mild tingle of excitement race through her at the thought of Harry’s story. She had always been a little too curious for her own good, one time when she was little unscrewing a cover plate for an outlet to see the wires inside and slipping the screwdriver into the slot by mistake. She got one hell of a jolt for her troubles and a sore arm for two days.
Matt joined them at the table.
Harry stood up, brought the burlap sack to the table and set it down. “Exhibit A,” he said.
He shuffled the cloth off of the object. The top of it was grayish white, smooth and domed. More of the sack came off to reveal two huge eye sockets, a nasal cavity and wickedly sharp teeth that jutted from a bear trap–like jaw. The skull was three times the size of a human cranium.
“Where the hell did you get that?” Matt said.
“My father. He killed one of these things,” Harry said, with some amount of pride.
Jill reached out, eager to see just how sharp the teeth were. She tapped her finger against one of the teeth and was rewarded with a pinprick of blood.
“My God, those are sharp,” she said, and sucked blood off her fingertip.
“These things have existed for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands,” Harry said. “My father kept a diary about them. Knew a lot.”
“How did your father know so much about them?” Donna said.
Harry straightened himself up and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Dad had an encounter with one when he was about nineteen. He was hunting up in these woods. This cabin was his. Anyway, he’s on a trail tracking a buck when the woods go dead silent. He hears branches crunching off the trail and the next thing he knows it was exploding out of the woods at him.”
“What’d he do?” Matt said.
“Fired the shotgun right in its face. It ran off into the woods, shrieking, and Dad ran back to the cabin, got in his truck and took off. He rarely came back up here after that.”
“Then what?” Jill said.
“He became somewhat of an expert on them. Interviewed a lot of old-timers who’d seen them. All over the county.”
“How did he come upon the skull?” Donna said.
“I grew up on a farm in Holland, about forty miles from Lincoln. One night Dad hears our horses making a terrible racket, like they want to bust out of the barn. He took me and his Winchester out to see what was the matter. Well, we get in the barn and isn’t there one of the bastards with one of our horses pinned to the ground. Old Buddy. Buddy’s got a bite out of his neck the size of a melon.”
Harry ran his hand over the top of the skull, as if petting a dog. Jill thought he was trying to calm his nerves.
“It charged us, and Dad fired, but it kept coming. So he tells me to run and tosses a kerosene lantern at the thing. It went up like a Roman candle, screeching and screaming. He put a few more shots from the Winchester in it too. If I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget that night. I can still smell it burning.”
“What else do you know?” Matt said.
“From what Dad learned about them from his interviews, they live inside people. He was never sure if they take over a host body, like a parasite, or if they have a natural disguise that they use. Meaning a human body. And there’s this too.”
He took a hot pink piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and placed it on the table. Jill snatched it up.
HARVEST SOCIETY TO MEET
St. Mark’s School Gymnasium
September 3
Time: 7 p.m.
MEMBERS ONLY
She passed it to Matt, who then passed it on to Donna.
“What the hell does this mean?” Donna said.
“They’re preparing to Harvest.”
“Harvest what?” Jill said.
“People.”
Jill’s blood temperature felt like it dropped twenty degrees.
“They hunt sporadically. They can’t draw attention to themselves, so their kills have to be selective. They sustain themselves for most of the time with huge amounts of food. But they’re hunters by nature, or so my dad thought. About every hundred years the sons of bitches all show their true forms and go on a mass hunt. They’ll try for as many as they can get in Lincoln, then they’ll move on and start in another town.”
“Sweet Jesus. I have articles about entire towns disappearing off the map.” Matt said.
Donna said, “And this meeting. What’s it for? To plan the attack?”
“Not sure. All I know is I’ve been planning to stop it for a long time,” Harry said.
“How?” Donna said.
“I’ve got a small arsenal built up under my gun shop. Lots of explosives. C-4, satchel charges, hell boxes, blasting caps, the works. I figure we can blow them to pieces.”
“Sneak into the meeting place?” Matt said.
“You got it. I figure explosives are the only way. Maybe bring in some gasoline too. For some extra insurance.”
“Don’t people try and join this society? Or wonder what goes on there?”
“Anyone can talk to Rafferty about joining, but they’
re always turned down for one reason or another. People think it’s some kind of exclusive club, but they really have no idea what it is. They just want to be a part of it.”
If they only knew, Jill thought.
“How long have they controlled Lincoln?” Donna said.
“For as long as anyone could remember. If you corner some of the old-timers, they might tell you what they know.”
They would be taking a huge risk in trying to stop the Harvest, but if they didn’t act, hundreds of people in Lincoln would die, not to mention anyone else who got in the way. It was quite possible that they could all be killed trying to stop the Harvest. The thought of trying to stop them made her guts feel weak, but she had never been one to stand by and let others suffer. She decided to speak up. “I say we do it. Come up with a plan and try to stop them.”
Matt smiled at her—a proud smile? She knew he wouldn’t leave the town without a fight.
“Or we could cut our losses and skip town,” Donna said.
“And just let this happen?” Jill said.
“You’re right,” Donna said. “I owe Rhonda something.”
“Then we do it?” Harry said.
Matt stood up. “Let’s hit the bastards,” he said. “Hard.”
Rafferty told Clarence he’d given him this assignment because he couldn’t trust anyone else to undertake such an important mission. In Clarence’s book, it was another way of saying that you had been elected for shit work.
Keeping low to the ground, he pushed his way uphill, branches catching him on the cheek and arms, leaving little white scratches. Not enough to hurt, just enough to be annoying.
Sweat trickled from his scalp and matted his hair to his forehead. It was only ten o’clock in the morning and already hotter than the devil’s sauna.
Rafferty had given him the task of snooping around Pottsville and finding the owners of cabins in the area.
He had stopped at the 7-Eleven on Route 16. The kid behind the counter wore a black T-shirt with the name KORN emblazoned on the front of it. The punk had blue hair and rings in his eyebrow, nostril and lower lip.
Clarence wondered how the little freak had ever gotten hired.
