Cat's Eye

by William W. Johnstone

  Carl pushed open the gate and Chuck followed him up the walkway. The first two helicopters were taking off as two more came thocking in, kicking up dust and pebbles. Carl waited on the porch as Edgar Conners walked around the house.

  “Did you bring what I requested?” Carl asked the man.

  “It’s being off-loaded now. Unusual request. Even for you,” he added.

  Carl said nothing.

  “My kid miffed at you, boy?” Edgar asked.

  “Slightly. The important thing is to win this war. Not just a battle, the whole war. End it.”

  Edgar nodded. “My men picked up a lot of eyes as they looked down coming in.”

  “Dogs and cats and some wolves have stationed themselves around the house, in the timber.”

  “They were moving deeper into the timber as we came in. What does that mean?”

  “It’s started. Your four men from town are out here. I’ve told them to keep an eye out for maggots. They’re all over the place.”

  The last two choppers had off-loaded and were taking off, making conversation impossible for a moment.

  “Dee’s angry with me too,” the father admitted. “She guessed that I made you a job offer.”

  “She’ll either get over it or she won’t. I’ll admit this to you: In all honesty, I could easily fall in love with your daughter, Edgar. But I’ve deliberately forced myself to keep my distance. Mentally and physically. Stay out here, Edgar. The town is blowing wide open. It’s a war zone. And to be honest, I don’t know if we’re going to win it or not.”

  “The choppers can be in here within thirty minutes to take us out. Governor Willis knows better than to try fucking around with me. I’ll step on him like a bug. He doesn’t particularly like me, but he knows I could put a hell of a dent in this state’s economy if I elected to pull everything out. Willis knows I flew in. And I didn’t ask him, I told him.”

  Carl nodded in the darkness of the porch. “See you around, Ed.” He walked to the Jag, Chuck right behind him, and drove off, back to town.

  “Impossible, arrogant, insufferable man!” Dee said from the door.

  Her father chuckled. “Love him, don’t you, kid?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped at him. “I have better tastes than that, I assure you.”

  Edgar Conners sat down in a chair. “I like him. He’s a good, decent, and strong man. It would take a strong man to keep the reins tight on you.”

  “Nobody keeps the reins on me!” she raged at him.

  “I bet Carl could,” her father needled her. “And I bet you’d love it.”

  “Ohhh!” She stamped her foot and almost tore the front door off getting inside.

  Edgar laughed softly. The shivering, wavering call of a wolf cut the night. It produced no fear in the man. The call of a wolf produces no fear in the heart of any intelligent person. Edgar Conners was one of the world’s richest men, but he was an industrialist with the heart of an environmentalist; he traveled the wilderness with a camera instead of a gun. There were always many of his men around him with guns, but they were not for shooting four-legged animals.

  “Well, I’ll just be damned,” Ed said, listening as other wolves joined in the lonesome chorus. “Probably some animal-liberation group cut you free from cages. But I don’t know if they did you any favors or not. At least in that cage you were free from stupid assholes with guns and traps and poison.”

  “My father,” Dee spoke from the screen door. “The big, rough, tough chairman of the board and international wheeler-dealer. But a real softy when it comes to animals.” All trace of anger was gone from her voice. She pushed open the door and took the chair next to him.

  “What was it I taught you, Dee? You and all my kids.”

  “Animals cannot speak for themselves. And until they can, I will be their voice.”

  “Good girl.”

  “You didn’t think I’d forgotten it?”

  “Oh, no. Dee? Carl has to do what he feels he must. Yes. You’re right. I offered him a job when this situation is cleared up.”

  “Has he taken it?”

  “Not yet. I don’t know that he will. He isn’t sure he’ll come out of this alive.”

  “Will we?”

  “Oh, yes. Unless the Devil personally strikes us all dead. And that could certainly happen. Dee, why in God’s name didn’t you and those kids in there leave with the choppers?”

  “Your question contains the answer, Dad.”

  “God’s name, huh? Carl told me you were very sarcastic about him being God’s warrior.”

  “A woman will do or say most anything to keep her man, Father.”

  “Oh! So now he’s your man, huh?”

  “You damn well better believe it. And he damn well better believe it too.”

  “I’m sure he does, Dee,” Ed said with a laugh. “I’m sure he does.”

  * * *

  Brother Speed pointed out the body sprawled on the sidewalk. “Over there, Jim.”

  Jim pulled the unit close to the sidewalk and stuck his arm out the window, directing a flashlight’s beam on the body. A pistol was lying just inches from the out-flung hand. Somebody had placed a three-round burst of gunfire into the man’s chest.

  Pain lanced up and down Jim’s left arm as cats covered the car, screaming and yowling and making horrible scratching sounds while their claws scraped painted metal. Jim beat his arm against the door and managed to get his arm free of the fangs and claws, then hurriedly raised the window. His arm was covered with blood.

  “Get to the clinic, Jim!” Speed said. “Can you drive?”

  “I can drive,” Jim said through gritted teeth. He floored the gas pedal and ran over those cats milling around on the street. The crunching sounds beneath the tires almost sickened both men. The cats on the car lost their footing in the acceleration and went flying and yowling from the unit.

  On the way to the clinic, Jim’s headlights showed one street to be moving up and down and back and forth. He slammed on the brakes.

  “What the shit is that?” Pastor Speed blurted out.

  “Maggots,” Jim said, reversing the car and doing a cop turnaround in the street. “Millions of them, looks to me. But probably more like thousands.”

  He met Carl along the way and flagged him down, telling him about the maggots.

  “Have one of your men grab a gas tanker truck,” Carl told him.

  “Where the hell will they get that?”

  “Steal the damned thing!” Carl shouted at him. “Crawl off your precious law books, you hillbilly! You’re fighting for your life!”

  “He’s right, Jim,” Pastor Speed said. “Law and order is gone for now.”

  “Okay, okay!” Jim said. He looked at Carl. “And do what with the truck?”

  “Open the valves in the rear of the truck just before he drives through the bugs. When he’s clear, I’ll toss a grenade in with them. We’ll get rid of some of them that way.”

  “Along with a few houses,” Jim muttered, lifting his mic and giving the order.

  Carl got out of the Jag and looked at Jim’s arm. “Go on to the clinic. I’ll take over here. You go with him, Preacher. Make sure he gets there.”

  Mike was behind the wheel of the gas truck later when it lumbered to a halt beside Carl and Chuck. Carl opened the nozzles and the gas spewed.

  “Drive slow through them, Mike. We want to saturate the street.”

  “Ten-four,” Mike said.

  “And don’t smoke,” Chuck called.

  Mike looked at him. The priest was grinning. “Hell of a sense of humor,” he muttered, dropping the truck into gear, and smiling at his all-too-accurate choice of words.

  The crunching of the maggots under the big tires almost made Mike sick to his stomach. The street became so slick with the crushed and slimy creatures he had to drop the transmission into the lowest range to keep going. When he had cleared the last of the flesh-eating worms, he poured on the coals and got gone from that ar
ea.

  Carl tossed his grenade and floored the Jag, putting as much distance between the gas fumes and the Jag as possible. The gas ignited and the following explosion rocked the car. One house collapsed as the concussion wave struck it and several small fires were started in the area. Chuck watched as residents ran outside, putting out the fires.

  “It doesn’t bother you that innocent people might have died in that explosion?” Chuck asked.

  “If they were innocent, they would be out here fighting with us, instead of against us or sitting on their lazy cowardly asses letting others do their fighting for them.”

  “There are many children in this town, Carl.”

  “They are no longer children of God, Chuck. That’s what’s so horrible about it. I’ve found it to be true in any of these jobs I’ve worked. I’ve had four- and five-and six-year-old kids turn on me and try to kill me.”

  “And could you kill them?”

  “No. I couldn’t. I bopped them around and left them in the rubble. They’ll be adopted and grow up to be teachers and preachers and heads of business and doctors and lawyers and so forth. Leaders of the community and still, unknown to their friends and neighbors, worshipping Satan and silently corrupting everything and everyone they come in contact with. Just like what has happened in this town. That’s why the satanic movement has to be crushed, wherever and whenever one finds it.”

  A firetruck roared around a corner and the cursing, hate-filled driver tried to smash into Carl. Carl spun the wheel, went up onto the sidewalk, and then back onto the darkened street.

  The priest was confused and his face mirrored that. “They are rushing to put out a fire when their sole objective is to destroy the town. I don’t understand.”

  “They don’t really know what they’re doing, Chuck. Part of them is on automatic, so to speak. They’re lost souls, just blundering around waiting for the end. They no longer have control of their minds.”

  “It’s a ... madness.”

  “No it isn’t,” Carl corrected. “It was all very carefully planned by the leaders. Months ago. The field troops are expendable. The leaders will escape, go underground for a time, and then emerge somewhere else with a new identity, but still worshipping Satan, setting up new covens and drawing others to them . . . and to the Prince of Darkness.”

  “And then they’ll start plans of destruction all over again.”

  “That is correct.” He turned into the parking lot of the clinic.

  “Jim’s all right,” Doctor Jenkins said. “We’ve checked blood cells. The cats are not infectious . . . in any kind of, well, devilish way. A week ago I’d have felt like an idiot saying that,” he muttered. “Anyway, we have started Jim on a series of anti-rabies shots. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Did you get all those horrible bugs?” Liza asked.

  “No. But we cooked a lot of them. I’d say we put a dent in their population. They normally have a life span of about a week.”

  Jim looked up. His left arm was bandaged from shoulder to fingertips. “We can’t last through a week of this, Carl.”

  “I know. I spoke with Edgar Conners. You probably heard the helicopters come in at dusk. He told me that he’d evac out any of you who want to go. Just give him the word.”

  “Is Mister Conners leaving?” Doreen asked.

  “No. He’s staying to see it through.”

  “And you, Carl?” Doctor Bartlett asked.

  Carl shook his head. “I can’t leave. I’ve got to see this through.”

  “By whose orders, young man?” Doctor Jenkins asked.

  Jim finally got it through his head and answered for Carl. His voice soft, he said, “God.”

  Chapter 33

  With Dee’s safety secure, Carl could concentrate on his mission. He slipped out of the clinic, leaving Father Vincent behind. Chuck was a good man, a solid man, but he really had no stomach for what Carl was going to do. Carl drove to the high school, conscious of eyes on him from behind curtains and drapes in the darkened homes he passed. He parked in the high school’s parking lot and set the Jag’s alarm system. If anyone even touched the car, a sharp, shrill alarm would sound. Carl got out, standing for a moment in the darkness.

  He checked the small .380 auto-loader in his back pocket. It was filled up with exploding ammo, the most lethal and expensive handgun ammunition on the market. A good hit anywhere on the upper torso would almost always drop the target. The 9-mm in his shoulder holster was also filled up with exploding slugs. A pouch on his belt was filled with extra clips. He slipped into a light backpack filled with articles he felt he might need, and left the M-16 and other weapons in the car, after clipping a few grenades to his belt. He had a powerful flashlight in his hand and another clipped to his belt. Carl walked toward the dark, silent building that loomed before him, the many windows seeming to glare at him like the huge evil eyes of some monstrous prehistoric being.

  This was as good a place to start as any.

  Clean out the town, and then he could direct all his energy, mental and physical, toward the destruction of Anya and Pet and the Old Ones in the country.

  He checked the basement first and found fresh bones on the floor. The flashlight beam touched briefly on the head of a man, the eyes open in sudden and painful shock before the severed head had realized it was dead.

  There was no life in the dusty and blood-spattered basement.

  Carl shone the flashlight’s beam on the steps leading to the ground floor, committing the way to memory, then clicked off the light, so his eyes would adjust to the darkness.

  He climbed the steps and paused for a moment on the landing, his ear to the door leading to the hall. He could detect no sound. He opened the door quickly and rolled out into the hall, coming back to his feet, in a crouch, against the far wall.

  The long silent polished floor of the corridor was empty, the lockers standing like rigid sentries in the dark. Any of them, he knew, could contain the dangerous and changed beings who had taken over the high school building.

  He walked a few yards, then paused, listening, all senses working hard. He heard a creaking sound inside one of the lockers, up ahead and to his right. He moved slowly toward the locker, the 9-mm in his hand, the hammer back. Reaching the suspect locker, Carl jerked open the door and almost shot a dead body.

  The mangled and half-eaten body of a woman dangled from a clothes hook in the locker. The head had been driven onto the hook, hooked just at the base of the skull.

  Carl closed the locker door and moved on, willing his heart to cease its pounding and his blood pressure to fall. A roaring from the far end of the corridor rattled the windows and stopped Carl in the center of the corridor.

  He had found his prey. Or had they found him?

  A foulness drifted to him on the closed air of the school, a stench that wrinkled his nose.

  Carl stepped to one side, his boot touching something soft. He glanced down and could make out what was left of the body of a teenage girl. He was standing in her blood. He stepped out of the gore and stayed close to the banks of lockers.

  Two creatures rushed him, moving incredibly fast and very silent on their bare feet. As they ran past windows, the faint light seeping in from the outside clearly showed the drastic metamorphosis they had undergone: the apelike jaw and the long hideous fangs, the hairy body and the clawed hands and feet.

  Carl assumed a two-handed grip on the 9-mm and pulled the trigger several times. Both creatures went down to the floor, both of them squalling in rage and pain as the slugs exploded on contact with soft flesh. The larger of the pair struggled to its feet, snarling its hate. It stepped forward, directly into a small beam of moonlight coming through the windows.

  Carl put two rounds into the beast’s chest, the slugs penetrating and exploded the heart. The smaller beast howled its rage and crawled toward Carl, dripping slime and blood from wounds, its claws clicking on the floor as it advanced.

  Carl put two rounds into the beast’s
face, the exploding slugs stopping its crawling and flinging the creature to one side.

  The hellish metamorphosis began its reversal as death touched Satan’s creations. The shapes became smaller, the yellowish-greenish slime changing to red human blood. The jaws lost their jutting apeness. The hands and feet became human, the hair disappearing.

  Ralph Geason and Roseanne lay dead on the floor.

  Carl rose to his boots and ejected the clip, fitting a full one into the butt of the 9-mm. He turned and walked slowly toward the door that would lead to the parking lot.

  “Score two for God and zero for the Devil,” he muttered as his hand touched the bar of the door. His eyes caught the outline of shapes waiting in the outside darkness. Human shapes. Waiting for him in ambush. He smiled and pulled a grenade from his belt. He eased out the pin, holding the spoon down and placing the grenade on the floor, against the door. Releasing the spoon, he darted back and pressed himself into a narrow gap between lockers, a fire-extinguisher station.

  The grenade blew, the explosion knocking out the double doors and filling the outside air with hundreds of lethal shards of glass and wood and metal and fragments from the grenade.

  Carl walked to the open space where the doors had been, the air thick with dust and the screaming of the wounded. He stayed against a wall, in the shadows, assessing the damage done to those who had been lying in wait for him. A man struggled to his feet on the sidewalk, a pistol in his hand. Carl shot him in the chest. Two others ran and limped off toward the street. Carl let them go. The others lay still on the dewy grass and littered sidewalk.

  Linda Crowley had been wrong in her assessment of the numbers of people in the covens of Butler; probably deliberately wrong, Carl thought. The Devil’s silent and insidious hand had touched almost all of the population of the small town. It was as Carl had suspected, so he was not surprised by it.

  One of the men on the sidewalk moaned in pain and rolled over on his back. He cursed for a moment, his words profaning God and damning any who worshipped Him. He looked up into the eyes of Carl Garrett, the 9-mm pointed at his bloody head. His left arm was broken, shattered at the elbow, dangling useless. “You’ll die,” he hissed at Carl, the words savage and pain-filled. “You’ll all die and you’ll die hard. I can promise you that. They’ll keep you alive for days, torturing you, you Christian puke. You can’t kill us all.”