shimmered in the corners of the boy's eyes, but the eerie smile didn't leave his face, and he didn't sob or make a sound.
"Damn," Charlie said softly.
He hugged the boy, but Joey didn't respond. Then Charlie picked up the first backpack, which was already full, and he put his arms through the straps, shrugged it into place, buckled it across his chest.
Christine finished with the second pack, made sure all the flaps were securely fastened, and took that burden upon herself.
Charlie put Joey's gloves and ski mask on for him. The boy offered little or no assistance.
Picking up the loaded shotgun, Christine followed Charlie, Joey, and Chewbacca out of the cabin. She looked back inside before she closed the door. A pile of logs blazed in the fireplace .
One of the brass lamps was on, casting a circle of soft amber light. The armchairs and sofas looked comfortable and enticing.
She wondered if she would ever sit in a chair again, ever see another electric light. Or would she die out there in the woods tonight, in a grave of drifted snow?
She closed the door and turned to face the gray, frigid fastness of the mountains.
Carrying Joey, Charlie led Christine around the cabin and into the forest behind it. Until they were into the screen of trees, he kept glancing around nervously at the open meadow behind them, expecting to see Spivey's people come into sight at the far end of it.
Chewbacca stayed a few yards ahead of them, anticipating their direction with some sixth sense. He struggled a bit with the snow until he reached the undrifted ground within the forest, and then he pranced ahead with an eager sprichtliness, unhindered by rock formations, fallen timber, or anything else.
There was some brush at the edge of the forest, but then the trees closed ranks and the brush died away. The land rose, and the earth became rocky and difficult, except for a shallow channel that, in spring, was probably filled with run-off from the melting snowpack, pouring down from higher elevations. They stayed in the channel, heading north and west, which was the direction they needed to go. Their snowshoes were strapped to their backpacks because, for the next few hours, they would be
mostly under the huge trees, where the mantle of snow was not particularly deep. In fact, in places, the boughs of the densely grown evergreens were so tightly interlaced that the ground beneath them was bare or virtually so.
Nevertheless, there was sufficient snow for them to leave a clear trail. He could have stopped and tried brushing away their tracks, but he didn't bother. Waste of time. The signs he would leave by trying to eradicate their footprints would be just as obvious as the footprints themselves, for the wind couldn't gain much force in the deepest part of the forest, at least not down here at floor level, and it would not soften and obliterate the brush marks. They could only press on, keep moving, and hope to outrun their pursuers. Perhaps later, if and when they crossed any stretches of open land, the increasing wind might be strong enough to help them out, obscure their passage.
if.
If they ever made it through this part of the woods and onto a stretch of open ground.
If they weren't brought down by Spivey's hounds in the next half hour or forty-five minutes.
if.
The woods were shadowy, and they soon found that the narrow eye holes of the ski masks limited their vision even further .
They tripped and stumbled because they didn't see everything in their path, and at last they had to take the masks off. The subzero air nipped at them, but they would just have to endure it.
Charlie became acutely aware that their lead on Spivey's people was dwindling. They had been at the cabin almost five minutes. So they were now just fifteen minutes ahead of the pack, maybe even less. And because he couldn't move as fast as he wanted while carrying Joey, Charlie had little doubt that their lead was narrowing dangerously, minute by minute.
The land rose more steeply; he began to breathe harder, and he beard Christine panting behind him. His calves and thighs were knotted, beginning to ache already, and his arms were weary with the burden of the boy. The convenient channel began to curve eastward, which wasn't the way they needed to go. It was still heading more north than east, so they could continue to follow it for a short while, but soon he would have to put the boy down in order to make
his way overconsiderably less hospitable terrain. If they were going to escape, Joey would have to walk on his own.
But what if he wouldn't walk? What if he just stood there, staring, empty-eyed?
Grace crouched within the snowmobile, staying down out of the line of fire, though her old bones protested against her cramped position.
It was a black day in the spirit world. This morning, discovering this disturbing development, she thought she would not be able to dress in harmony with the spectral energies. She had no black clothes. There had never been a black day prior to this .
Never. Fortunately, Laura Panken, one of her disciples, had a black ski suit, and they were nearly the same size, so Grace swapped her gray suit for Laura's black outfit.
But now she almost wished she weren't in contact with the saints and with the souls of the dead. The spectral energies radiating from them were uniformly unsettling, tinged with fear.
Grace was also assaulted with clairvoyant images of death and damnation, but these didn't come from God; they had another source, a taint of brimstone. With emotionally unsettling visions, Satan was trying to destroy her faith, to terrorize her. He wanted her to turn, run, abandon the mission. She knew what the Father of Lies was up to. She knew. Sometimes, when she looked at the faces of those around her, she didn't see their real countenances but, instead, rotting tissue and maggot-ridden flesh, and she was shaken by these visions of mortality. The devil, as wise as he was evil, knew she would never give in to temptation, so he was trying to shatter her faith with a hammer of fear.
It wouldn't work. Never. She was strong.
But Satan kept trying. Sometimes, when she looked at the stormy sky, she saw things in the clouds: grinning goat heads, monstrous pig faces with protruding fangs. There were voices in the wind, too. hissing, sinister voices made false promises,
told lies, spoke of perverse pleasures, and their hypnotic descriptions of these unspeakable acts were rich in images of the mutant beauty of wickedness.
While she was crouched in the snowmobile, hiding from the rifleman at the top of the meadow, Grace suddenly saw a dozen huge cockroaches, each as large as her hand, crawling over the floor of the machine, over her boots, inches from her face. She almost leapt up in revulsion. That was what the devil wanted; he hoped she would present a better target and make an easy job of it for Charlie Harrison. She swallowed hard, choked on her revulsion, and remained pressed down in the small space.
She saw that each cockroach had a human head instead of the head of an insect. Their tiny faces, filled with pain and selfdisgust and terror, looked up at her, and she knew these were damned souls who had been crawling through Hell until, moments ago, Satan had transported them here, to show her how he tortured his subjects, to prove his cruelty had no limits. She was so afraid that she almost lost control of her bladder. Staring at the beetles with human faces, she was supposed to wonder how God could permit the existence of Hell. That's what the devil meant for her to do. Yes. She was supposed to wonder if, by permitting Satan's cruelty, God was indeed cruel Himself .
She was supposed to doubt the virtue of her Maker. This vision was intended to bring despair and fear deep into her heart.
Then she saw that one beetle had the face of her dead husband, Albert. No. Albert was a good man. Albert had not gone to Hell. It was a lie. The tiny face peered up, screaming yet making no sound. No. Albert was a sweet man, sinless, a saint. Albert in Hell? Albert damned for eternity? God wouldn't do such a thing. She was looking forward to being with Albert again, in Heaven, but if Albert had gone the other way . . .
She felt herself teetering on the edge of madness.
No. No, n
o, no. Satan was lying. Trying to drive her crazy.
He'd like that. Oh, yes. If she was insane, she wouldn't be able to serve her God. If she even questioned her sanity, she would also be questi oning her mission, her Gift, and her relationship with God. She must not doubt herself. She was sane, and Albert was in Heaven, and she had to repress all doubts, give herself completely to blind faith.
She closed her eyes and would not look at the things crawling on her boots. She could feel them, even through the heavy leather, but she gritted her teeth and listened to the rifle fire and prayed, and when eventually she opened her eyes, the cockroaches were gone.
She was safe for a while. She had pushed the devil away.
The rifle fire had stopped, too. Now, Pierce Morgan and Denny Rogers, the two men who had been sent into the woods to circle around behind Charlie Harrison, called from the upper end of the meadow. The way was clear. Harrison was gone.
Grace climbed out of the snowmobile and saw Morgan and Rogers at the top of the meadow, waving their arms. She turned to the body of Carl Rainey, the first man shot. He was dead, a big hole in his chest. The wind was drifting snow over his outflung arms. She knelt beside him.
Kyle eventually came to her ." O'Conner is dead, too. And George Westvec." His voice quaked with anger and grief.
She said, "We knew some of us would be sacrificed. Their deaths were not in vain."
The others gathered around: Laura Panken, Edna Vanoff, Burt Tully. They looked as angry and determined as they did frightened. They would not turn and run. They believed.
Grace said, "Carl Rainey . . . is in Heaven now, in the arms of God. So are . . ." She had trouble remembering first nanies for O'Conner and Westvec, hesitated, once again wishing that the Gift did not drive so much else out of her mind ." So are . . . George Westvec and . . . Ken . . . Ken . . . uh . . . Kevin
. Kevin O'Conner . . . all in Heaven."
Gradually the snow knitted a shroud over Rainey's corpse.
"Will we bury them here?" Laura Panken-asked.
"Ground's frozen," Kyle said.
"Leave them. No time for burials," Grace said ." The Antichrist is within our reach, but his power grows by the hour. We can't delay."
Two of the Skidoos were out of commission. Grace, Edna, Laura, and Burt Tully rode in the remaining two, while Kyle followed them on foot to the top of the meadow where Morgan and Rogers were waiting.
A sadness throbbed through Grace. Three men dead.
They moved forward, proceeding in fits and starts, only when the way ahead had been scouted, wary of running into another ambush.
The wind had picked up. The snow flurries grew thicker. The sky was all the shades of death.
Soon she would be face to face with the child, and her destiny would be fulfilled.
PAR'CI Cp(? I«ill FIVE
Pestilence, disease, and war haunt this sorry place .
And nothing lasts forever; that's a truth we have to face.
We spend vast energy and time plotting death for one another .
No one, nowhere, is ever safe .
Not father, child, or mother.
-The Book of Counted Sorrows
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
- MacBeth,
William Shakespeare
Nothing saddens God more than the death of a child.
- Dr. Tom Dooley
Christine said, "That's good. That's my boy," as Joey followed Charlie up through the trees, heading for a broad set-back in the slope, halfway to the ridge line.
She had been afraid that he wouldn't walk on his own, would just stand like a zombie. But perhaps he was not as detached from reality as he seemed; he didn't talk, didn't meet her eyes, seemed numb with fear, but apparently he was still enough in tune with this world to understand that he had to keep moving to avoid the witch.
His small legs were not strong, and his bulky ski suit hindered him a bit, and the ground was extremely steep in places, but he kept going, grabbing at rocks and at a few clumps of sparse brush to steady himself and pull himself along. He walked with increasing difficulty, crawled in some places, and Christine, following behind, often had to lift him over fallen timber or help him across a slippery, ice-crusted outcropping of rock. They couldn't move as fast with the boy as they could have without him, but at least they were covering some ground; if they'd had to carry him, they would have been brought to a complete halt.
Frequently, Chewbacca moved ahead of them, loping and scrabbling up the forested slopes as if he were not a dog at all but a wolf, at home in these primeval regions. Often, the retriever stopped above them and looked back, panting, with one ear raised in an almost comical expression. And the boy, seeing him, seemed to take heart and move forward with renewed effort, so Christine supposed she ought to be grateful the animal was with them, even if its resemblance to Brandy might have contributed to Joey's mental deterioration.
Indeed, she had begun to worry about the dog's chances of survival. Its coat was heavy, yes, but silky, not like the thick fur of a wolf or any other animal indigenous to these climes. Already, snow had frozen to the tips of the long hairs on its flanks
and belly, as well as to part of its tail and to the furry tips of its ears. It didn't seem bothered yet, or too cold, but how would it feel an hour from now? Two hours? The pads of its feet were not made for this rugged terrain, either. It was a house pet, after all, accustomed to the easy life of suburbia. Soon its feet would be bruised and cut, and it would begin to limp, and instead of racing ahead it would be lagging behind.
If Chewbacca couldn't make it, if the poor mutt died out here, what would that do to Joey?
Kill him?
Maybe. Or send him irretrievably far off into his own silent, inner world.
For a couple of minutes, Christine heard a distant growlingbuzzing below and behind them, and she knew it must be the snowmobiles roaring into the upper meadow, closing in on the cabin. That grim fact must have penetrated Joey's fog, too, because for a few minutes he made a gallant effort, moved faster, clawing and scrambling upward. When the sound of the snowmobiles died, however, so did his energy, and he resumed a slower, more labored pace.
They reached the set-back in the ridge and paused for breath, but none of them spoke because speaking required energy they could put to better use. Besides, there was nothing to talk about except how soon they might be caught and killed.
Several yards away, something broke from a vine-entangled clump of gnarled dogwood and dashed across the forest floor, startling them.
Charlie unslung his rifle.
Chewbacca stiffened, gave a short, sharp yip.
It was only a gray fox.
It vanished in the shadows.
Christine supposed it was on the trail of game, a squirrel or a snow rabbit or something. Life must be hard up here, in the winter. However, her sympathies lay not with the fox but with the prey. She knew what it was like to be hunted.
Charlie slung the rifle over his shoulder again, and they started climbing once more.
Above the set-back, on the last slope before the ridge line, the
trees thinned out, and there was more snow on the ground, although not enough to require snowshoes. Charlie found a deer path, which followed the route of least resistance toward the flat top of the ridge. Where the track passed unavoidably through deep snow that might have given Joey trouble, the deer had cleared the way-there must have been dozens of them through here since the last big storm, tamping the snow with their hooves-and the boy was able to proceed with only a little slipping and sliding.
Chewbacca became excited by the scent of the deer that had come this way before them, whimpered and growled in the back of his throat, but didn't bark. She realized he hadn't once barked since leaving the cabin. Even when startled by the fox, he had made only a small sound that couldn't have carried far, as if he sensed that a bark would have been a beacon for the witch. Or maybe he just didn't have enough energy to cl
imb and bark at the same time.
Each upward step not only put ground between them and their pursuers but seemed to take them into worse weather. It was as if winter were a geographic reality rather than an atmospheric condition, a real place rather than a season, and they were walking deeper into its frigid kingdom.
The sky seemed only inches higher than the treetops. The flurries had changed to heavy snow that slanted down between the pines and firs. By the time they reached the crest of the ridge, where there were no trees at all, Christine could see that a new storm had moved in and that, judging by this early stage, it was going to be even worse than last night's storm. The temperature was well below zero, and the wind was beginning to churn up from the valleys, driven by the rising thermals, blowing harder and gusting more fiercely even as they stood there, trying to catch their breath. Within a couple of hours, the mountain would be a white hell. And now they were without the warm refuge of the cabin.
Charlie didn't immediately lead them down into the next valley. He turned and, standing at the edge of the ridge, stared thoughtfully back the way they had come. Something was on his mind, a plan of some sort. Christine could tell that much, and she hoped it was a good plan. They were outnumbered and out gunned. They needed to be damned clever if they were going to win.
She stooped beside Joey. His nose was running, and the mucous had frozen to his upper lip and to one cheek. She wiped his face with her gloved hand, cleaning him as best she could, and she kissed each of his eyes, held him close, keeping his back to the wind.
He did not speak.
His eyes looked through hers, as before.
Grace Spivey, I will kill you, Christine thought, looking back the way they had come, into the woods. F or what you've done to my little boy, I will blow your goddamned head off.
Squinting as the stinging wind blew snow into his face, Charlie surveyed the top of the ridge and decided it was just the place for an ambush. It was a long, treeless expanse, running roughly north and south, as narrow as fifteen feet in some places, as wide as thirty feet in others, mostly swept free of snow by the gales that punished its exposed contours. Rock formations, smoothed and carved by centuries of wind, thrust up all along the crest, providing a score of superb hiding places from which he could observe the ascending Twilighters.
Dean Koontz - (1984) Page 33
