Cat's Eye

by William W. Johnstone

  A hard hammering began against the floor of the house. Boards began cracking and splitting under the impact. More and more ghostly shapes began appearing on the grounds: some women dressed in gowns that were several hundred years out of fashion, some men in evening clothes that predated the Civil War.

  A casket rammed through the floor of the house.

  The top of the casket burst open under the impact and a foul, musty odor filled the house just as fists began beating at the windows and outside walls of the A-frame. Faces appeared at the windows, gray, rotted faces, many with bits of flesh clinging to the skull bones, worms and maggots of various sizes slithering in and out of empty eye-sockets and nose cavities and the open, moving, but so-far-silent mouths-silent except for the clacking together of yellow and rotted teeth as the jawbones worked.

  A man struggled to free himself from the shattered casket protruding through the hole in the floor.

  “Hit the floor!” Carl yelled, and gave him a half a dozen rounds from his 9-mm, the exploding bullets shattering long-dead bones and sending bits and pieces of ash-white slivers bouncing against the walls and floor.

  Still the undead fought for freedom from his entombment.

  Terrell grabbed a poker from the fireplace set and started smashing the living dead. A howling began outside, the sound rising above the screaming of the storm.

  The risen dead had found voice and were thanking the Dark One for their freedom.

  A window was smashed by a club-wielding skeletal woman, and the risen began attempting to climb inside the house, moaning and howling, their bones rattling.

  “Shotguns!” Edgar shouted, lifting his twelve-gauge and blasting the undead that were clamoring and clanking over each other in their hellish death rush to enter the house.

  Lib and Becky gave it up as their stretched-to-the-limit nerves could take no more. The girls collapsed on the floor, both of them in a cold faint.

  Buckshot struck the forever-grinning, and damned, mottled skulls were blown apart, the headless corpses running around in the rain, banging into each other, bones falling from inside their tattered and rotted clothing.

  Dingo had pushed Dee into a safe corner and was refusing to let her out of his protection, pressing his weight against her legs, holding her in place while he snarled and growled, exposing his terrible fangs, daring anybody or anything to try to harm her.

  Outside, it was a massacre as the walking dead tore apart the security men, flinging bloody arms and heads to the howling winds. The cold, bone-shining fingers clamped around ankles, dragged the men from under vehicles, and ripped the legs and arms from them, flinging the bloody limbs high into the stormy night with the strength of the insane.

  Another casket rammed through the floor of the house, breaking open and tumbling a grinning woman to the littered floor.

  Slimy fingers clamped around the ankle of Sonya and as she screamed, she beat at the rotted flesh of the head with her camera, breaking the old bone and exposing a skull full of fat worms.

  Jesse grabbed a meat cleaver from the kitchen and severed the arm of the woman at the elbow. Sonya pried the dead fingers from her ankles and revulsion filled the reporter at the touch.

  The grimacing, bloody, brain-dripping head of a security man came crashing through an already shattered window and smashed face-first into a wall, sliding down, leaving a trail of blood and snot.

  So much for this glass being bullet-proof! Edgar thought. I’ll find the man who sold me this shit and we’ll dance a few rounds.

  Carl struggled into his flamethrower harness and fought his way to the back porch door, leaving the front and both sides to the others. He sparked the nozzle into life and sprayed the outside, the na-palmlike, sticking, thick fuel igniting the clothing of half a dozen of those who had chosen to give their souls to the Master of Evil.

  The night was pocked with running blotches of screaming and howling fireballs. They’d been born in the smoking pits of Hell, and the fire returned them to the sulfuric womb that had puked them out.

  “Get into those cases of grenades!” Carl yelled. “Start throwing them.”

  Gabe and Terrell began ripping open the cases of grenades and tossing them to anyone who wanted them. Pins were pulled and the mini-bombs hurled into the savage and ungodly night outside.

  The grenades and Carl’s flamethrower turned the tide of battle, the explosions shattering the old bones of the newly risen and blowing them apart. The shrapnel shredded the walking dead, bringing them down like a house of cards in a stiff breeze.

  “Gabe!” Edgar shouted. “You boys grab as much equipment as you can and clear us a path to the vehicles. We can’t stay here any—”

  The rear of the house collapsed, the pilings sinking into the earth and vomiting out more of those long-buried in the Devil’s graveyard.

  “Let’s go!” Terrell yelled. Those security people who had taken refuge in the house moved at the orders, plunging into the outside darkness and the unknown. They formed lines left and right as the others began running out of the lop-sided A-frame, jumping off the porch and racing to the cars and trucks.

  “Carl!” Dee wailed.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Somebody get her out of here!”

  She was picked up and dumped into the cab of a truck. The truck’s engine roared into life and was gone down the road.

  “Carl!” Edgar yelled, his eyes not finding the young man. “Come on, boy!”

  Carl stepped out of the house to stand on the shattered and body-littered porch, Dingo by his side. Carl was loaded down with equipment. “This is my war, now, Edgar. Head for town. I’ll see you at daylight.”

  “You’re crazy, boy!”

  Carl laughed and Dingo snarled.

  Edgar Conners was picked up bodily by his security men and manhandled into the Jaguar. The Jag roared off.

  The rain abruptly stopped. The moon hung like a fat ball of ghostly light in the sky.

  The undead had clattered off into the darkness of the timber.

  Carl jumped off the porch and began walking toward the woods, Dingo by his side.

  Chapter 38

  At the high school, Jim and Max and the others were taking it easy, and were startled when Edgar and his crew roared up and explained what had happened near the woods.

  “A devils’ graveyard.” Pastor Speed spoke the words softly. “And young Garrett stayed out there?”

  “Said it was his fight now.”

  “He didn’t want us to come out and help?” Daly asked.

  “Said he would see us at daylight. I guess that’s when he wanted us out there.”

  “One man and a dog against . . . how many?” Max questioned.

  Edgar shrugged, remembering what Carl had said on the road. “Only God and Satan know the answer to that.”

  * * *

  A hooded shape reared up in front of Carl.

  Dingo leaped without growling or snarling, huge jaws open and teeth glistening. He ripped open the man’s throat, the force of the jaws breaking the man’s neck and leaving the head dangling by only a thin strip of skin. The man kicked and thrashed on the ground for only a few seconds before death took him.

  “Good boy,” Carl whispered, patting the dog’s big head.

  Dingo looked up, blood dripping from his jaws. There was a mean look in his mismatched blue and brown eyes. A look that silently said: Come on, boss, let’s go kick some ass!

  “Come on.”

  Man and dog pressed deeper into the woods.

  The siren’s song began its tantalizing and seductive melody.

  “Fuck you!” Carl said.

  The singing stopped.

  A very soft and dry clattering gave the newly risen’s position away. Carl tossed a grenade in that direction and hit the ground, pulling Dingo down with him.

  The explosion shattered the dark stillness and brought forth a hideous howl that did not come from the dry throat of one just risen from the Devil’s graveyard.

&nbs
p; A creature lurched from the shrapnel-shattered timber: an Old One, half of its head blown off. Carl gave it a squirt from his flamethrower and the creature exploded before his eyes, stinking blood flying in all directions, along with various parts of the Hell-born creature.

  Dingo whirled around, ran hard for a few yards, and then leaped, his fangs wet and savage in the night. Nick Jamison screamed just once as Dingo’s jaws slashed and his paws ripped, coming away with half of the flesh of the young man’s face in his jaws and blood on his paws from digging into the punk’s throat.

  Nick fell back, horrible gurgling sounds coming from his torn-open throat. Val ran screaming out of the timber, a pistol in her hands. Carl gave her a squirt of the fire that she thought so much of. Her reaction gave him the impression that she disliked it intensely as she was engulfed in the flames. The oil in her unwashed and greasy hair exploded, the force of the detonation knocking the eyes out of her head, which probably gave her an even more cockeyed view of life than she’d possessed before . . . at least for a few more very painful moments.

  She fell to the wet ground, kicking and screaming and howling, as her miserable and wasted life ebbed from her.

  Shapes came at a rush toward Carl and Dingo. Carl held the trigger back on the nozzle of erupting fire and death and sprayed the rushing mob, both human and non-human.

  Dingo busied himself mauling the life out of two who made the mistake of thinking the animal would be easier to handle than Carl. They died regretting that decision.

  Carl tossed two grenades into a second mob which came screaming out of the darkness at him: Fire-Frags, mini-Claymores, which shredded those closest to the twin explosions, turning them into ripped and torn rags of meat, knocking others down and bleeding and out of it.

  “Dingo! Back, boy! Come on!”

  Man and dog ran from the scene of carnage, out of the woods and back to the tilted house. If this works, Carl thought, we can end this tonight. If it doesn’t, I’m screwed.

  He only had a few minutes, and he used them well, ripping open crates with a pry-bar and taking out Claymore mines. He quickly activated the mines and pulled out the hand-held pulse generator—commonly called a clacker because of the sound it made when squeezed. He laid out a double row of Claymores, being careful to make certain the “This Side Toward Enemy” warning was really toward the path he hoped the enemy would take and not facing his own position.

  Carl tested the firing device and cap. The light in the test kit flashed. Everything was go!

  Each Claymore contained at least 700 steel sphere submissiles which were propelled by a healthy charge of C-4. Some called the Claymore the scythe of the Grim Reaper. If Carl’s plan worked, the scythe was going to be turned against the Reaper and his odious followers.

  He called Dingo to his side and patted the ground. “Lay down, Dingo. Stay. Stay.”

  The well-trained dog plopped down and stayed down, close to Carl.

  Carl quickly changed to full napalm tanks for his squirter and waited. He soon heard the sounds of the running hate-filled beings who sought his death. When they were close enough to spot him, Carl boldly stood up and began yelling at the mob. They changed course and ran straight for him, straight down the alleyway formed by the deadly Claymores.

  Carl smiled a warrior’s smile as he spotted Anya and Pet among those chanting for his blood. The earthly and unearthly were carrying clubs and knives and axes as they ran, closer and closer, screaming for his blood.

  Carl punched the clacker and the explosions were enormous in the night. Those closest to the Claymores were shredded like bloody cabbage, and the shock waves knocked them sprawling in torn heaps.

  Carl began tossing grenades into the mangled mass as fast as he could pull the pins and hurl them. Parts of human and non-human bodies were flung into the air as the powerful grenades exploded. Carl stepped into the shattered alleyway of death and sparked the nozzle of the flamethrower into life. Lifting the nozzle, he began systematically burning the dead and dying and wounded. The nose-wrinkling odor of burning flesh filled the cool and wet night.

  Carl exhausted the tanks and switched to fresh ones. He burned every body part he came to under God’s full bright moon, reducing the part to char, whether it be a hand, arm, leg, torso, or head.

  Some of the bodyless heads cursed him as he worked, the curses soon changing into shrieks of pain as the fire consumed them.

  He found pieces of Anya and Pet and lingered long over them, turning what was left of the pair of godless shapechangers into lifeless lumps of smoking, unrecognizable heaps. With his boots, he scattered the ashpiles and burned them again.

  Carl worked throughout the night, stopping only occasionally for a break. Dingo followed him, staying well away from the flame-shooting nozzle.

  Carl knew there were some beings still in the timber, but without the leadership of Anya and Pet, they could be dealt with easily enough when daylight spread its welcoming brightness over the torn land.

  Just as the sky was changing from purple to gray in the east, he heard the sounds of vehicles coming up the road. Carl slipped out of his harness and let the empty tanks fall to the soggy ground.

  The men and women who exited the vehicles stood in silence as they looked at the wreckage and the burned and still-smoking carnage.

  Pastor Speed stood, the faint light reflecting off his helmet liner, the brass of the shotgun shells in the bandolier crisscrossing his chest, and said, “Dear God in Heaven, is it over?”

  “No,” Carl told them all, the weariness in his voice very plain. “Not yet.”

  Chapter 39

  Carl had asked for front-loaders to be brought in and the ashes of the godless scooped up, to be trucked away and later sealed in thick concrete tombs.

  “Isn’t this overkill, boy?” Edgar asked.

  “No. If just one spark of life remains in any of this”—he waved his hand toward the charred remains—“ they’ll rise and return.” He looked at the industrialist. “You want to take that chance?”

  The man shook his head. “No,” he said softly.

  “I just spoke with Byron Winston,” Daly said, walking up. “He’s coming in by helicopter for a personal inspection.”

  “When?” Jim asked.

  “Should be here in a couple of hours.”

  Carl stretched out in the bed of a truck, his head pillowed on a rolled-up tarp. “The sounds of the chopper will wake me. I got to get some sleep.”

  He closed his eyes and was asleep in two minutes.

  * * *

  Carl knew a couple of the FBI agents; they were the same ones sent into Ruger after his father died. He did not know the lone CIA agent or any of the National Security Agency men and women. He pegged the governor’s aide, Byron Winston, as a pompous, strutting asshole with a big mouth and a bigger ambition.

  Carl stood to one side, sipping coffee out of a paper cup and listening to bits and pieces of various conversations. No one had yet asked him anything and he wasn’t going to volunteer a word.

  He knew somebody would get around to him; it was just a matter of time.

  Finally, the Company man walked up to him. “I got half a dozen men laying back, in town. Anything you want us to do?”

  “It isn’t going to be legal.”

  The Agency man smiled. “Now that would be novel.”

  “The timber around this place still contains some coven members.”

  “I get the picture.”

  “The wolves are on our side. Leave them alone.”

  He nodded his head, adding, “Strangest op I ever been on.”

  “The President send you people in?”

  “We came solely out of the goodness of our hearts, all of us being community-minded and good solid Christians.” He said it all without changing expression, then turned and walked to his car, lifting the mike and speaking for a few seconds. He tossed the mike on the seat, picked up a small case, and walked down to the curve in the road, squatting down, waiting.

>   Carl watched him open the case and fit a long silencer onto the barrel of a pistol. In a few minutes, two cars pulled up and parked, and other operatives joined the Agency man. They talked for a moment and then disappeared into the woods.

  Carl looked toward the ravaged town of Butler. Thick black smoke was pouring into the sky, clearly visible even miles from town. It did not surprise him, and he had a hunch what it was.

  Daly walked to his unit and called in. He acknowledged the message received and walked over to Carl. “Those escaped cons attacked the high school . . . for some reason. They set it on fire before they could be shot dead by Federal agents.”

  “Sure they did,” Carl said.

  “That’s the story.”

  “Any survivors from the fire?”

  “Very few.”

  “The kids?”

  “They were moved to a secure location before the cons attacked.”

  “That certainly was thoughtful on somebody’s part, wasn’t it?” It would have taken a deaf mute to miss the sarcasm in his words.

  “I was just told that it’s completely out of our hands, Carl. It’s all Federal now.”

  “They’ll fuck it up. They always do. They did in Ruger.”

  “I have no reason to doubt that.” He looked around. “Where did those super-spooks go?”

  “In the woods.”

  “So it’s over, or soon will be?”

  “The latter. But it’s going to be a sight to see. The Devil does not take defeat lightly.”

  Daly grunted.

  “How about those in the town who are just now coming out of their homes, professing to know nothing about what happened?” Carl asked.

  “How did you know about them? You’ve been out here all night.”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “And will again?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  “If possible.”

  “Take it out of Virginia the next time, okay?”

  Carl managed a small grin. “I’ll do my best.”

  Daly sighed. He was tired and he looked it. “We didn’t win the war, did we?”