Cat's Eye

by William W. Johnstone

  Then whatever it was growled.

  That brought Wilbur up short. He’d caught six or eight glimpses of the thing and he knew it sure as hell was no dog.

  “Come on out of there!” Wilber called. “Step out this minute or I’ll blow your ass off!”

  The sound that sprang from out of the darkness cut through to Wilber’s heart, chilling him. It was like nothing that the mayor had ever heard before. It started as a high, shrill scream and ended in a roaring growl that backed Wilber up a couple of steps.

  He lifted the shotgun and fired.

  * * *

  Jim and Calvin had managed to get Sheriff Rodale to his feet and into the bathroom so he could clean himself up. He smelled like an overflowing cesspool. The man was babbling and was clearly scared half out of his wits.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly, Jim,” Betty said, a weary look on her face.

  “It’s all right, Betty. We was just leavin’ the doctor’s lab when the call came in. Exactly what happened—do you know?”

  “What happened?” Rodale hollered, as he waddled out of the bathroom, a robe belted around him. “I’ll tell you what happened. I seen Ermma Barstow’s head lookin’ at me through that there winder!” He pointed. “Eyes all wild-lookin’, and long red tongue just a-lickin’ at the glass and her fingernails scratchin’ at the winder. Hell, Jim, you can still see where she was lickin’!”

  “For a fact,” Jim said. “Can you get a sample of the saliva, Cal?”

  “I’ll get my bag.”

  “What the hell is goin’ on in this county, Jim?” Rodale squalled.

  “You best go lay down, Ned,” Jim told him. “You don’t look so hot. Color is all wrong.”

  “It’s a damn miracle I didn’t keel over dead!”

  I should be so lucky, Betty May thought. “I’ve got some tranquilizers that will help you rest.”

  “I ain’t no hippie dopehead, woman!”

  “Take one, Ned,” Jim urged. “They’ll help you rest. I’ve took ’em from time to time. They ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  “If you say so, Jim. Okay. You a good man, Jim. Damn good man.” He waddled off up the hall.

  Jim went outside to assist Calvin. “Don’t say it, Jim,” the doctor urged. “It would be much appreciated if you didn’t say I told you so.”

  “The only thing I’m going to say is that we’re over our heads in this thing. I got to get some help in here.”

  “For a fact,” the doctor agreed. “And quickly.”

  * * *

  The thing screamed just once and then roared. That horrible smell seemed like it was coming out of the creature’s mouth. That was followed by a wrenching, tearing sound and Wilber could see the . . . God in Heaven, whatever it was . . . race across the vacant lot next to his property, leaving a slick-looking trail behind it.

  “Call the law!” Wilber hollered to his wife. “Call the law! Never a goddamn cop around when you need one,” he mumbled. “And turn on the floodlights!”

  Wilber walked to the hedge and really started shaking as the floodlights highlighted the scene before him. Whatever had been lurking there had torn the wrought-iron fencing out of the brick and mortar, bending the iron like taffy candy.

  Wilber’s legs started shaking so badly he had to lean up against a tree before he fell down. He could hear the sirens of the cop cars as they raced toward his property.

  “What the hell is going on in this county?” Purdy muttered.

  * * *

  “Ralph stole his neighbor’s car and took off,” the city cop informed Max. “I’ve alerted the sheriffs department and the highway patrol. But if he gets into the timber, we’ll play hell ever finding him.”

  “You call Jim Hunt?”

  “He’s on his way. There was some trouble over at the sheriffs house. And we got the other two units responding to trouble at the mayor’s house. Shots have been fired.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “I don’t think so. It was a prowler.”

  “Where’s Carter?”

  “Gone to the mayor’s house.”

  “Get on over there and watch that nitwit. You know the mayor is just looking for a reason to can him. I’ll wrap it up here.”

  “This is damn sure one weird night, Chief.”

  “Yeah. And something tells me it’s a long way from being over.”

  * * *

  Edgar Conners’s men were in a motel room, monitoring the events over a scanner.

  “It’s coming unglued,” one said. “But damned if I can figure out what’s causing it.”

  “It’s gonna be a replay of what happened over in Ruger County,” another said.

  “But who knows for sure what did happen over there?” a third man said.

  * * *

  “I hit a stone wall, chief,” Mike reported to Jim.

  Mike had caught up with the chief deputy at the Geason house.

  “Nothing from the VHP?”

  “Captain Taylor filed his report the day the power lines exploded over there in Ruger. The FBI ordered most of it sealed and locked up, in the interest of national security. The trooper I talked to was in the office the day Taylor pulled the pin. He said Taylor was asked what happened over there in Valentine. He said he never would forget Taylor’s words. The captain said, ‘God won. I think.’ ”

  The words caused a shiver to slowly work its way up and down Jim’s spine. “We need to get in touch with Taylor.”

  “That’d be a good trick, Chief. Taylor was attacked and killed by a large animal, or animals—species unknown—at his fishing camp on the Shenandoah approximately four days ago. The body was just discovered this morning.”

  Jim put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “All right, Mike. You’re not going to get much sleep tonight. When you’re finished, take twenty-four hours off. I want you on that computer at the office. You can do things with it that nobody else can.” Jim paused for a moment.

  “You want me to do some hacking, Chief?”

  “In a word, yes. Can you do it?”

  Mike smiled. “Not on the one at the office. But I can with my own at the house.”

  Mike’s major at college had been criminology and computer science. He could make a computer do everything except the boogie-woogie, and he was working on that.

  “I want all the names you can get me of everybody who had anything to do with whatever it was that happened over in Ruger County. Then I want to know if they’re still alive. I won’t ask you to try to get into FBI files.” He smiled. “But VHP is another story.”

  Mike smiled and nodded his understanding. “I got a few buddies,” he said, and left it at that.

  When Mike had gone home to start his lonely vigil behind his complex equipment, Jim walked over to Max.

  “Can you figure this one out, Max?”

  “It stinks, Jim. And I’m not saying that just because I knew and liked Ralph Geason. I just don’t trust that damn woman that’s been visiting the Geasons. And I’ll tell you something else that’s odd. My dog and cat don’t like her either.”

  Jim smiled. “We can’t get a warrant based on that. Where’s she from, Max?”

  “Ruger County.”

  * * *

  Jim and Max checked in over at the mayor’s house. They almost lost their supper when they looked at and smelled the green slime that had splattered the bricks when Wilber shot the intruder. The smell was identical to what Jim had smelled at both murder scenes and at the jail. And nothing human could have done that to the fence. He doubted even a great ape could have done that . . . and they damn sure didn’t have any great apes around there. At least none that was all covered with hair and walked hunched over.

  Max waggled a finger at Benny Carter. The big man lumbered over. “Not a word about this, Benny. You are officially deaf, dumb, and blind. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir, Chief.”

  “You don’t know nothin’ about nothin’, Benny. You don’t say nothin’ to any
kind of reporter.”

  “Yes, sir, Chief.”

  “Fine, Benny.”

  “Chief?”

  “Yes, Benny?”

  “What could have done this?”

  “I don’t know, Benny. But from now on, you answer unknown-intruder calls damn careful, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. I shore do understand that! Uh, Chief... the mayor said he wanted to talk to you just as soon as you showed up.”

  “All right. You coming, Jim?”

  “No. I got to make a little run. Max, call Cal over to his clinic and tell him I said to get a sample of this green . . . stuff on the bricks. But to be damn careful handling it.”

  “I’ll do better than that, Jim. Benny, go over to Doctor Barlett’s clinic and tell him what’s happened here. Give him a lift over here if he’d like.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jim drove straight to the A-frame of Dee Conners. He was not surprised when the sweep of his headlights highlighted Carl sitting on the front porch, an M-16 across his knees.

  Carl let the chief deputy in and walked with him up to the porch, explaining, “Dee is taking a shower, getting ready for bed. I went to sleep for a couple of hours right after you people left. I’ll stay up during the night.”

  Jim explained what had happened in town, leaving nothing out. He ended with: “And the young woman visiting the Geason house is from Ruger County. Linda something-or-another.” He describer her.

  “I know her. She was my sister’s best friend until after the incident. Then she never had anything else to do with Carrie. Linda changed dramatically. Became very withdrawn. Refused all offers of professional help.”

  “And your conclusion is?”

  “I would watch her very carefully. I doubt that her being here is coincidental.” He shook his head and sighed, the sigh audible in the stillness of the night. “Captain Taylor dead. I liked the captain. He was a fine, brave man.”

  “Boy, assuming the worst is about to happen here in the county, what do these . . . creatures hope to gain by all this?”

  “According to what reports I was allowed to read after the incident in Ruger, the government’s powers-that-be, mostly atheistic scientists, concluded that the surfacing is inbred. It’s just something the creatures do by nature. The scientists felt the . . . beings were some sort of throwback to a much earlier time. The missing link, or something like that. They completely discounted any involvement by Satan.”

  “And your opinion of that?”

  “Total bullshit. I felt Satan’s presence. I heard Father Denier talking to Satan and felt the reply of the Prince of Darkness.”

  A mountain-bred, near-hard-shell, rock-solid Baptist, Jim Hunt could not suppress his shudder.

  “Be very wary of any stinking pools of liquid that you or any of your men might find, Jim. That’s where the Old Ones, the ancient gods will surface. And they’ll jerk a person into those pools and eat them.”

  “The government, our government, suppressed all this information?” Jim’s words were softly spoken.

  “They didn’t have a choice in the matter. Can you even imagine the panic it would have caused—nationwide. Everybody with a gun, all over the United States, maybe the world, would have been shooting at anything that moved at night. I don’t have to like what the government did, but I see why they did it.”

  Jim looked around him, at the silent vastness of the timber surrounding the A-frame. “I got to tell you, boy: You got more guts than I have, stayin’ out here.”

  “I’m not afraid of these creatures. I faced them once before. I’ve made my peace with God and know that He will help me when and how He can.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You come across as a God-fearing man, Jim. You know that God rules the Heavens and Satan rules the earth. God gave us the faith to sustain us.”

  “God, guns, and guts.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Dee came out onto the porch, greeted Jim, and sat down. She smelled of soap. “More trouble?”

  Briefly, Jim brought her up to date.

  Laughter drifted faintly to them, coming from the dark timber around the house. The laughter was taunting and the evil contained therein was as black with sin as the night was dark.

  “I just had me a thought,” Jim said, after the laughter had died away. “If we don’t contain this ourselves, and do it quietly—keepin’ the press out of it—the government just might cordon off this area and then we’d really be in the pickle barrel.”

  “Yes,” Carl agreed. “We’re already fairly well isolated here. The mountains to the west, only a handful of very small and widely spaced towns in the county, and Charlottesville some twenty-five miles to the east. It’s pretty rugged territory.”

  Jim stood up and walked to the steps. With his back to Carl and Dee, facing the darkness, he asked, “Will bullets stop these things?”

  “Temporarily,” Carl said. “It’ll knock them down and keep them down, giving me the time to get some fire on them.”

  Jim turned around. “And just how do you propose to do that?”

  “With a flamethrower I have in the house.”

  The chief deputy arched one eyebrow. “You can’t be everywhere at once, boy.”

  “I realize that. But there is one thing we’ve got going for us that the other side is deathly afraid of.”

  “I’d be right proud if you’d tell me what that thing is.”

  “God.”

  Chapter 10

  The night trudged slowly toward the dawning. Carl stayed on the front porch, with Dingo by his side. He occasionally dozed, knowing the dog would awaken him if anything attempted to cross the newly cleared ground and try to breech the chain-link fence.

  Nothing did.

  At dawn, Carl gave up his vigil and went to his bedroom to catch a few hours of real sleep.

  At eight o’clock, the doctor from the lab in Richmond arrived at Calvin Bartlett’s office. A bleary-eyed Cal greeted him.

  “You look like shit, Cal,” Doctor Robert Jenkins bluntly told him.

  “Thanks a lot, Bob. I feel like crap too. I did manage to get a few hours’ sleep, though. I slept here on the couch. Just got up and started a fresh pot of coffee in my office—come on. Believe me, you’re going to need more than coffee before this day is over.”

  “What the hell have you got going here in Reeves County, Cal?”

  Cal turned in the hall to face the man. “You want the truth?”

  “Of course?”

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping you can tell me. Before it’s too late.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “It’s more than that, friend.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s evil.”

  * * *

  Carl woke up at ten, showered, shaved, and went into the kitchen to fix something to eat. Dee had beat him to it. While he was showering she had started the bacon, and was breaking the eggs and dropping them into a skillet when Carl walked in.

  “The chanting and singing began just after dawn,” she told him.

  “If I heard it, I didn’t pay any attention to it. Have you heard any news?”

  “Nothing was on the local station about any of the. . . events of last night. The police must have really put a lid on it.”

  He smiled at her and nodded his head in agreement. “I don’t expect that radio station to remain in operation much longer.”

  She looked up from the eggs. “Why?”

  “Even though Valentine was and is off the beaten path, it still isn’t as isolated as Butler. If the plan is to cut us off, the radio station would have to go.” He paused, meeting her eyes. “Well, maybe not. What wattage is it?”

  “I ... really don’t know. You can’t hardly get it ten miles out of town.”

  “Probably two hundred and fifty watts. This time, I think the plan was thought out; Ruger County was an accident. Two men working in a mountain disturbed Anya and Pet, long before they we
re to have awakened. This time, they’ve been awake and with several years to plan. And hate,” he added.

  “You think they know you’re here, Carl?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure of that. Killing me would be quite a victory for them. The son of the man who almost destroyed them.”

  “And they might not cut off the radio station after all?”

  “I’m sure Anya has people in town who support the evil. Even though those people might not realize it consciously. They might decide to use the radio station. Tell me, you listen to it daily, right?”

  “Well, yes. Or at least I used to, until about two, no, three months ago. Now I just tune in for the news.”

  Carl’s smile was both sad and knowing. “Let me guess, Dee. They changed their format.”

  “Why . . . yes. That’s right. They use to play a mixture of soft rock and pop and some country music crossovers. Now they’ve gone to heavy metal and really hard rock. Groups I’ve never heard of; I can’t even understand the words. Nearly all the advertisers have pulled away. A lot of kids love the music—if that’s what you want to call it—but more kids don’t than do; they’ve told me so. But no adult I know of listens to it. With no sponsors, I don’t see how they’re making it.”

  “Oh, they’ve got a sponsor, Dee. And they only need that one.”

  “Who is it? I never hear any commercials.”

  “Satan.”

  * * *

  Bob Jenkins pushed back from the lab table. Slide samples of tissue, skin, and saliva taken from the window of Rodale’s house and the green slime that was taken from the fence littered the work table.

  Bob said, “This green . . . crap, I believe, serves the same function for the whatever-the-hell-it-was as human blood for us. This saliva is highly infectious. These cells—my God, Cal, I don’t know what they are . . . except that they’re extremely infectious. Thank God they’re not airborne. I mean, look.” He waved his hand. “They’ve been exposed to air for hours. They’re not dying—they’re multiplying! I’ve poured every disinfectant and drain opener and full-strength floor cleaner in this place on them. They thrive on it! I doused a pattern of cells with a dozen of the strongest antibiotics known to humankind. They still live and reproduce, faster than anything I have ever witnessed in my life. They just keep splitting and splitting and splitting, each split producing a dozen, fifty, a hundred new cells—they come in clusters. It’s, it’s . . . both horrifying and fascinating. And deadly, Cal—very deadly.”