The Influence

by Bentley Little

  “Try not to kill anyone,” Ross emphasized.

  “I’ll do what I have to do,” Hec said.

  He sounded tough, sounded brave, but McDaniels had said that the last time they’d come here, they’d both ended up running away, too afraid to take any action. He hoped against hope that that wouldn’t happen this time.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Kevin said, his hands full as he started toward the rear of the barn. “And maybe stay back from that wall. Just in case.”

  There was a tractor off to the left of the barn, and Ross hurried over, hiding behind it. From this angle, he could see the open area between the house and barn, and the army of defenders stationed around the metamorphosing body. McDaniels and Hec ran up next to him, rifles at the ready. Hec’s gun apparently had a telescopic sight, and he looked through it, aiming at the house.

  “There is a hose,” he said. “Right by the front steps. Holy shit! There’s Cameron, too.” He started grinning. “Here, bud. Take a gander.”

  Ross accepted the rifle and, using the gun site like a spyglass, he trained it on the house. Father Ramos was standing with Cameron Holt on the front porch, and Ross was not merely shocked to see the priest, but filled with a disappointment so profound it was almost sorrow. They’d rescued Father Ramos, driven him away, but he had not escaped Magdalena, had not returned with the full power of the church behind him. He had instead come back of his own accord, seduced once again by the empty promise of the angel. He was a part of this now, and, like Holt, one of the monster’s minions.

  Cameron Holt, for some reason, was wearing a dress. That’s what Hec had been grinning about, but even through the small lens of the gun site, Ross could see from the rancher’s face that the man was mad.

  He swiveled the rifle toward the crowd in front of the monster’s body, seeing several people who looked familiar.

  Was Jill here, too, somewhere?

  He hoped not, but he had to admit that it was possible, and he would have continued looking, trying to find her, but time was passing quickly, and if all went according to plan, the barn would be going up in flames at any moment. He handed the rifle back.

  And the barn exploded.

  It didn’t literally explode. Roof and walls didn’t fly outward in a hail of shattered wood. But the conflagration that engulfed the structure did so in a blaze of glory, flames bursting out with an audible roar, the heat so intense that he could feel it here by the tractor. The fire had the desired effect, most of the gathered throng instinctively dashing over to investigate.

  But not all of them did.

  A significant number remained guarding the encased body, and Ross realized that it was up to the three of them to do something about that so Kevin could get access to the monster.

  He just hoped his nephew had survived starting the fire.

  “Come on!” Ross shouted.

  They ran into the open. McDaniels kept his rifle trained on the front porch of the house, while Hec scrambled sideways, facing the remaining guards.

  Kevin was nowhere in sight.

  Father Ramos was bending over the front porch railing, vomiting, but Holt was starting to raise his shotgun. “Stop right there, asshole!” McDaniels ordered. “Or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

  Some of the men who’d gone over to the barn to see what had happened looked like they were about to turn around.

  Ross ran for the hose, turning the faucet on and pulling the hose out to the center of the yard as far as it would go. He’d dropped his box of Coke bottles, but it didn’t matter. The caps were all sealed, and he quickly unscrewed one, pressed the flowing hose against the opening, screwed the cap back in and ran several yards toward the men and women shielding the body. “Get away from there!” he ordered, and threw the bottle.

  It flipped end over end, exploding in the air just before the first line of guards, the bottle bursting spectacularly, spraying acid in all directions, hitting several people and causing them to scatter, screaming.

  He didn’t have time to view the results, but immediately hurried back to where water from the hose was already making a puddle in the dirt. A bullet hit the ground next to him, splashing up mud. Another whizzed by, more felt than seen, and, next to him, Hec took a shot. Nothing else was fired at him, and when he turned around to unscrew the cap of another bottle, Ross saw the body of a middle-aged man lying on the ground. There was no time to think about it, to agonize about it, to worry if something else was coming his way. He simply filled the bottle with water, sealed it, shook it, ran and threw.

  This time, people scurried away before the explosion, and behind them, in the corral, he saw Kevin scrambling through the spaces between boards to get to the monster.

  The monster.

  It had captured his attention, lying on the open floor of what had once been Cameron Holt’s smokehouse as though displayed on a stage. He had not seen it in this state, and, this close, he saw how thin the outer covering was, how completely transparent, almost as if the body had been encased in plastic wrap. The body itself was not the same one he had seen before. Rather than that melting, devolving mess, this creature was much bigger, much darker, much more clearly defined.

  It was also very much alive.

  A single red eye stared out at him.

  He heard whistling.

  Today’s the day, he thought.

  As he watched, the chrysalis cracked open, in the middle, and through the breach, a long black appendage emerged that could have been a tail, could have been a tentacle, could have been a feeler, could have been a very thin leg. The slimy extremity slid along the top of the encasement, searching for another opening or trying to make another opening. There was nothing frantic in its movement, no hurrying, and Ross watched, enthralled, as the black appendage calmly felt for a way to get the angel out of its cocoon.

  It was an angel, he saw now. And it was beautiful. It had not been resurrected for any malevolent purpose. Resurrection couldn’t be evil. They were the evil ones for trying to attack it. The angel should not be assaulted, it should be celebrated. Father Ramos had returned because he knew the truth, and now Ross himself knew the truth, and he would do everything in his power to—

  No.

  This wasn’t right.

  He closed his eyes, fought against the thoughts that were imposing themselves on his mind.

  Kevin!

  Had it gotten to Kevin, too?

  No, it hadn’t. Ross opened his eyes to see his nephew sprinting away from the emerging demon—for that’s what it was, he had finally decided, a demon—and unspooling det wire behind him.

  “Get back!” Kevin was shouting to anyone within hearing distance. “Get away!”

  Ross and Hec heeded the advice, as did several men and women who had started to wander back from the burning barn. Whether they believed in the angel or not, they understood after what had happened to the barn that Kevin was about to do some serious damage, and their survival instinct kicked in, overriding everything else.

  McDaniels still had his rifle trained on Cameron Holt, but as soon as Ross and Hec ran by, he joined them, all three speeding past the edge of the house and down a section of the drive before a thunderous clap and a blast of hot wind at their backs made them stop and turn around.

  A massive blaze, taller than it was wide, with flames of different color flaring up and out, engulfed the black figure on the old smokehouse’s foundation, including the searching tentacle. In the fire, the remainder of the chrysalis burned away, and for a brief moment, the thing inside rose to its feet, stretching out to full size. It had thick black wings, but they clung to the spiky body rather than extending. The head, even more triangular than before, and more geometric than antlike, displayed a horrific face bearing almost no resemblance to anything human, insect or animal. From within the multi-colored flames, red eyes looked upon them with hatred and a depth of knowledge so vast that its very gaze made Ross more terrified than he had ever been in his life.

  Kevi
n knew what he was doing, however. Like a fire tornado, the blaze shot up, swirling around the figure, and the heat was so great that the skin began to melt. The monster screamed, but instead of a roar there was a whistle, a keening so high-pitched and powerful that Ross thought his eardrums were going to burst.

  Then it was gone.

  The burning monstrosity didn’t collapse or shatter, it simply disappeared, winking out of existence as though it had never been there in the first place. The inferno surrounding it lost all color for a second, looked black-and-white, and then it was a normal fire, the kind that burned houses and forests, yellow and orange.

  Stunned, confused—was it really all over?—the three of them started slowly back, McDaniels and Hec with their rifles at the ready, just in case.

  A lone figure emerged from behind the tightly controlled blaze, walking toward them. “Over here!” Kevin shouted.

  On the porch, a furious Cameron Holt raised his shotgun.

  Hec’s bullet took him down.

  As he ran over to his nephew, Ross wondered if Hec’s action had been necessary—the man was a sharpshooter, after all. Couldn’t he have been more precise? Couldn’t he have injured the rancher rather than killed him?—but he was grateful that Kevin was okay, and though he wasn’t sure they had ever hugged before, they hugged now, and Kevin cried into his shoulder like a little boy.

  On the porch, Father Ramos was on his knees, praying out loud for forgiveness.

  Ross was crying, too, and the hug lasted for a long time, family clinging to family for support. Around them, rifles raised, McDaniels and Hec looked out for anything amiss.

  Ross wondered if cellphones worked here now, and pulling away from his nephew with a final pat on the back, he took out his phone and punched in 911.

  “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice on the other end of the line responded.

  Unprepared, Ross didn’t know what to say. “There’s a fire at Cameron Holt’s ranch outside of Magdalena,” he finally got out.

  “What is the address on that, sir?”

  “I don’t know, but you can’t miss the smoke.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll need—” Before the dispatcher could continue to question him, he clicked off.

  “If the cops question you on shootin’ Holt,” McDaniels was telling his friend, “I’ll swear it was self-defense.”

  Ross nodded. “We all will,” he said.

  Hec shrugged. “If it even comes to that. This thing ain’t registered, so they might not figure out it’s me. Lotta people hated Cameron. He had it comin’.”

  “But if someone else here reports it was you…”

  Hec nodded toward the still-burning barn, where dazed townspeople were wandering around aimlessly, as though they’d just woken up after sleepwalking. “I ain’t gonna worry about it.”

  They left the fires burning. It was a long trek back out to the car, and they hiked through not only strange dying foliage but past the inert bodies of animals that were not quite animals, many of which were deteriorating into a gelatinous mess.

  By the time they reached Magdalena, they could hear faint sirens sounding from somewhere up the road to Willcox. The main street of the town still looked abandoned, though Ross thought he detected movement behind the windows of one of the adobe houses. In the parking lot of the market, deflated balloons hung from the crooked antenna of an old pickup truck. A lifeless dog lay in front of the gas pumps.

  He thought of the lyrics to an old Simon and Garfunkel song: Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.

  Facing the wrong way on the street, he parked in front of the bar and got out. All of them did.

  The sirens drew closer.

  Kevin tapped him on the shoulder, smiling wryly. “Unc?”

  “Yeah?” Ross said.

  “We’re even.”

  THIRTY NINE

  Dirty and disheveled after several days of living out of her van, Jill returned to the house in San Diego to collect her belongings. And take a shower. The place was empty, Ross nowhere in sight, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t want to face him right now.

  It felt as though she’d awakened from a long dream. No. From a drunken blackout. She’d been acting like…not herself, and while she understood why, the fact that it had occurred at all was a complete embarrassment to her.

  She found the note Ross had left, read it, and relaxed a little. She didn’t have to rush; it looked like he wouldn’t be back for awhile.

  After taking a long leisurely shower and changing into some clean clothes, Jill went into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. She walked around the house as she ate, mentally deciding what she should and shouldn’t take with her. Finishing the sandwich and grabbing a water bottle out of the refrigerator, she started packing her clothes. Cleaning out her half of the dresser and placing her underwear in her open suitcase, she thought about Ross with bewilderment. She had actually moved with him here to California? Why? That wasn’t the sort of thing she did.

  He wasn’t even her type.

  Not that she had a type.

  She wasn’t that shallow.

  But an engineer? That was out of character for her, and she wondered now what she could have been thinking. It wasn’t a knock against Ross. He was a nice guy, and she liked him all right, but not enough to move in with him and follow him to another state.

  No wonder her mom was mad at her.

  She got a trash bag out of the kitchen and used it to bag up the dirty laundry that she fished out of the hamper. Luckily, she hadn’t taken everything out of her house. In fact, most of it was still back in Magdalena. She smiled wryly. At least emergency evacuations were good for something.

  She bagged up her toiletries, then started carrying things out to the van, placing the bags, boxes and suitcases next to the godawful paintings of that reservoir that she had wasted her time on. It took only four trips, and after the last one, she walked back inside, looking through each room to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Glancing over at the lone bookshelf on the wall above Ross’ computer, Jill realized that the only books displayed were manuals and technical books on science and engineering.

  How could she not have noticed that before?

  She left her key on the kitchen counter. And a note, a short message stating simply that she was moving out. It didn’t explain anything, but, then, she didn’t know how to explain what she was going through. She didn’t understand it herself.

  She would call him later, she decided, once she’d figured out what to say. For now, she just wanted to go back to Mesa.

  And see her mom.

  FORTY

  Ross returned to Magdalena the following weekend in a rented pickup. Lita and Dave were already back at the L Bar-D and in the process of cleaning up, Lita still taking it easy for the most part, following doctor’s orders, limiting herself to housework so she could take frequent rest breaks as instructed, Dave hard at work outside, using a borrowed tractor to drag all the accumulated debris out to a spot in the field, where he intended to burn it. Word had spread that Lita’s cousin Ross was the one who had come up with the plan to destroy the monster, and as a way to say thank you, several people, farmer’s market customers mostly, had volunteered to help Lita and Dave fix up the ranch, and they were there with rakes and shovels, planting new plants, cleaning out the root cellar.

  There would be a lot of the communal spirit in the coming weeks, he knew, as neighbor helped neighbor get back on track.

  That was one of the things he liked about Magdalena.

  The bees, miraculously, had survived. Some might have flown off and not returned, but most of them were back in the boxes, in their hives. The horse and goat were nowhere to be found, but somehow, in the midst of all this chaos, new chickens that Dave ordered had arrived, and they were in their yard, clucking happily and scratching in the dirt. It was both a relief and a welcome change to see the hens acting perfectly normal, and more than anything else, i
t made Ross feel that everything was going to be all right.

  Lita had thrown her arms around him the minute he arrived, and he was grateful to be able to hug her back unreservedly, without a single improper thought crossing his mind. Everyone greeted him with gratitude and enthusiasm, and it felt like a homecoming, even though there were a couple of people he didn’t even recognize.

  He’d come back, basically, to pick up the rest of his belongings from the shack, and his original plan was to do it all in one day: speed over to Magdalena, pack up his stuff and hit the road. But Lita convinced him to stay the night, and after she helped him box up his effects, he assisted her in making sandwiches for everyone. They all ate lunch outside, on and around a picnic table that had been set up near the fruit trees, and he heard story after story about the horrors people had endured over the past month.

  Ross and Lita stayed at the table after Dave and the others had gone.

  “So was your job still there?” Lita asked. “After?”

  “It was still there.” He paused. “Jill wasn’t.”

  “Oh, Rossie! What happened?”

  He picked at the crumbs on his paper plate. “I don’t know, really. She left a note saying she was leaving, but that was all the note said. It didn’t tell me anything other than that. I’ve tried to call her several times, but she won’t pick up. My guess? It was never real in the first place, her interest in me. It was real on my part. Still is,” he said ruefully. “But I’ve never had good luck with women. For a brief time, I did. Now it’s over.”

  “Maybe she’ll think about it and come back,” Lita said encouragingly.

  “Maybe,” he said, but he knew that wasn’t true. He might still have feelings for Jill, but it seemed pretty obvious that whatever she had felt for him had died with the monster.

  Ross stood. “I have a whole afternoon ahead of me here, and you’re trying to get this place in order. You must have something for me to do.”