“No,” Sam admitted, “It didn’t. And I don’t know why. But I, for one, am not going to take any chances.”
As Sam and Jane Ann stood on the front porch at Chester’s, Jimmy pulled into the drive. After he recovered from his shock of their marriage, he said, “It’s strange—no one is moving in town. A few young people, that’s all.” He looked at Sam and Jane Ann. “Who married you?”
“I did,” Sam answered.
The young cop frowned, smiled, then nodded, keeping his many questions to himself.
“Are the kids still drinking?” Sam asked.
“Drunk, you mean! I stopped picking them up about an hour ago. If I put them in the lockup, my own men would turn them loose. If I took them home, their parents would laugh at me. Then Addison told me to leave them alone; said they weren’t hurting anyone or anything. Sam, I can’t get through to the Highway Patrol; can’t get through to any law enforcement agency, anywhere. We’re cut off—stuck! I’m going to turn in my badge, just as soon as I figure out who to turn it in to. I can’t enforce the law—what’s the use of wearing it?”
Sam thought of Jimmy’s girl. “Have you seen Judy lately?”
The young man’s smile was sad and bitter. “Oh, yes, Sam. Saw her this morning. Just before she checked into the hotel with David Vanderwerf, Paul Smiley, and George Deschin. I understand they had quite a party.” He spat on the ground.” She took them all on—so I’m told.”
Wade had stepped out on the porch, listening. “You think it’s wise to turn in your badge?”
“I don’t think it makes any difference,” Sam answered for Jimmy. “In a matter of hours we’re all going to be participants in the biggest blood bath to ever hit this state. A badge is not going to make any difference, one way or the other.”
Jimmy shuddered as he thought of what lay before them. Wade’s face was pale. Sam was totally calm. Jimmy removed the badge from his shirt. “I’ll go get Peter. We’ll get our gear together.”
“Try to stay calm, Jimmy,” Sam urged him.
Jane Ann stood in the doorway of Michelle’s bedroom, her lips pursed in disgust. She shook her head at the filth. “I’ve never seen anything like this. What are you going to do with all this junk?”
“Leave it. We don’t have that many hours to spend in this house. Why bother with it?”
She walked to the painting, staring at it. “It’s evil!” Picking up a long fingernail file from the dresser, she ripped the painting to shreds, hacking at it until it was no longer recognizable.
Marching to the kitchen, Jane Ann found a large bag and stuffed Michelle’s satanic possessions into it, along with what was left of the picture. She carried the bulging bag out to the back yard, dumping it into the garbage can.
Neighbors watched from their windows, their eyes wild with hate.
Sam had watched her with mild amusement. When she returned, he asked, “You feel better, now?”
“Some,” she returned the smile. Her smile faded as she looked outside. The sunlight was beginning to wane. Night was slowly creeping upon the town.
She walked to him, putting her arms around him, pressing close to him. “Tell me everything will be all right.”
He stroked her hair. “I wish I could,” he replied honestly. “But I’m afraid I’d be telling you a lie.”
Night fell heavily on the prairie town, shadowing the lighted streets, deepening the gloom of alleys and back yards, bringing with the darkness an almost tangible aura of evil. The streets were murky. Red-rimmed eyes looked out from dark windows, heavy breathing could be heard. An occasional snarl ripped from once-human throats, and savagery began to stalk the town.
At full dark, a gang of drunken teenagers smashed the back door of a drug store and helped themselves to a selection of narcotics, washing down the highs and lows with raw whiskey. Patrolman Vickers of the Whitfield Police Department watched them stagger down the street. He chuckled as he touched the medallion around his neck, then laughed and drove away into the night.
Fifteen minutes later, he sat in his patrol car and watched an elderly woman walk her dog. Vickers took his .38 from his holster, took careful aim, and shot the old woman in the head. The slug tore through her brain, blowing away part of her face. She sprawled in a front yard. The dog ran away into the night, barking its joy at being set free.
Vickers laughed wickedly and drove away.
He did not see the huge Beast shuffle out of the darkness, dragging the old woman into the shadows, where others of his kind waited, lips wet with drool. Their teeth flashed a dull, slick yellow as they feasted on the still-warm flesh.
Ruth Cash heard something prowling in her back yard. Fear made her heart pound in her chest. Those teenagers were back. They circled her house, calling out from the night, telling her what they were going to do to her. She had called the police and the sheriff’s department, but no one came to help her. Now her phone wasn’t working.
An attractive woman of forty, a widow for ten years, Ruth stepped out on the back porch. “You boys better get away from here!” she yelled. “I’ll call your parents!”
They laughed at her from the darkness, and the taunting, jeering chilled her as they shouted filth at her.
“You’re all dirty!” she screamed. “I’m going to call the police.” She began to weep. “Dear God,” she whispered, calling on Him for the first time in years. “What is happening in this town?” She backed away, off the porch, into the kitchen. “Help me. Please help me.”
The young men came at her, knocking her down, dragging her into the living room. They stripped her, spread her legs, pinning her to the floor. Ruth watched as one young man removed his jeans, exposing himself, his hardness leaping free.
“What is she?” a teenager asked. “How come she ain’t one of us or Them?”
“She ain’t nothing,” was the reply.
Then they raped her.
They took turns with her, in all positions. Ruth screamed her pain and outrage as they sodomized her. But no one came to help her. They beat her, forcing her to engage in oral sex with them.
And the night wore on, painfully. Ruth lay sobbing on the carpet, bruised, aching, and humiliated.
“Reckon she can still breed?” she heard a young man ask.
“I don’t see why not,” another replied. “We’ll take her to Them.”
Hours later, Ruth’s sanity had left her, as had her former shape. Mercifully, she had fainted when the young men had dumped her over the fence at Tyson’s Lake—and she got her first glimpse of the Beasts. She had regained consciousness to find herself on her knees, a Beast mating with her, his organ driving deep inside her, his fangs biting her on the neck.
She now squatted deep inside the earth. Her body was covered with coarse, thick hair. She mumbled and snarled and growled, and the others seemed to understand her, and she them. She had no recollection of her former life. No remembrance of the God she had once loved, then had forsaken after her husband died, for a belief in nothing. Dimly, as a female Beast, she understood she was going to breed new life in a few months.
There were several young Beasts crawling around on the earth floor of the cave.
And Ruth was happy.
“I don’t like it,” the young woman said. “Honey, we haven’t seen one person in over an hour. No one. It’s spooky!” she moved closer to her husband, placing a hand on his leg.
They had been married less than a week. It was their honeymoon.
“Aw, don’t be scared,” he tried to reassure her. “Besides, this is the only road for miles. We’d have to go a hundred miles out of our way to get to the main highway if we didn’t take this country road through—what is the name of this county? Fork. Sure is a big county.”
“Okay,” she sighed, looking around, making certain all the doors were locked. “But I don’t like it—just remember that.”
“Yes, dear,” he smiled.
Ten minutes later, a patrol car pulled them over, its flashing lights turnin
g the highway red.
“You were speeding,” she told her husband in an accusing voice.
“Get out of the car!” the deputy told them.
“Me, too?” the young bride asked.
“You, too.”
Outside their car, headlights and flashing red lights almost blinding them, the young couple did not see the men rush them until it was too late. The young husband was beaten into unconsciousness with saps, then shot through the head at close range, his brains splattering on the blacktop as his head bounced from the impact of heavy slugs.
The woman screamed herself into hysteria as the possessed lawmen ripped off her clothing, forcing her to stand naked in the glare of the headlights.
“Look at them tits,” one laughed, pinching her nipples, rigid from cold and fear.
They raped her and tossed her into the caged back seat, with her dead husband.
They drove to Tyson’s Lake.
And the Beasts were pleased this night. Two fresh females, both of them breeders, in one night. The Beasts feasted on the dead newlywed, and then the leader mounted the bride.
The young woman screamed her fear and revulsion as the Beast mounted her. In moments, though, she began to moan and snarl, her body beginning the rapid transformation from human to Beast.
After a time, she sat on the rocky floor of the cave with what had once been Ruth Cash, speaking in a language of mumbles and snarls and guttural lashings.
And they were content.
SEVENTEEN
Neither Sam nor Jane Ann wished to sleep in either of the parsonage’s two bedrooms, for evil seemed to hang in the rooms, and the foul odor clung to the carpets and drapes. Jane Ann made up the couch in the living room—which Sam learned folded out into a bed—and they slept there.
After making love, they slept fitfully for a few hours. But the night sounds of Whitfield soon awoke them. Sam was jarred out of a restless sleep, shaken into awareness by a scream.
“What was that?” Jane Ann sat up in the bed, eyes wide with fear.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, pulling on his jeans and boots. “But I don’t think we’d better count on much more sleep this night.”
Before Sam could slip into his shirt, Jane Ann’s screaming spun him around. She pointed to a side window of the living room. The face of Max Steiner stared at them through the glass, his eyes dead-like, red-rimmed. Drool dripped from his lips.
Sam grabbed his .45, jerked open the front door, and recoiled in horror as he ran into Paul Barlow. Recovering, Sam pushed the man off his porch, sending him sprawling on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing on my porch at one o’clock in the morning?” Sam shouted at him. Sam backed away from the steps as Barlow slithered up the walkway, up the steps, crawling as a snake, hissing sounds coming from his lips, his mouth pulled back in a snarl, exposing his teeth.
Sam kicked him in the face, his boot catching his once friendly neighbor on the nose, sending blood spurting. Barlow fell to the sidewalk, crouching there, hissing and snarling at Sam.
Sam raised the .45, jacking back the hammer, his finger tightening on the trigger. “I’ll kill you!” he warned, then watched as Barlow slithered off the steps, on all fours, working his way into the night, making terrible hissing noises as he crawled.
“God!” Sam’s flesh felt creepy.
“SAM!” Jane Ann screamed. “They’re coming in the back door.”
The minister spun, running through the house, through the living room, dining room, into the kitchen. The back door was splintering under the crush of men gathering on the porch.
Sam lifted the .45 and pulled the trigger half a dozen times, the slugs tearing huge holes in the wood. He shouted to Jane Ann, “Get your shotgun—watch the front.” He knew Jane Ann would not hesitate to use the 12 gauge.
There was screaming in the darkness around the back door, as the men—or whatever they were—ran away, dragging several of the dead or wounded with them. The snarling and howling of the possessed filled the night.
Jane Ann’s shotgun boomed three times, shattering the momentary quiet. A screaming followed the discharges, then the thud of a body lifted off its feet and slamming to the ground. Moaning.
Sam switched on the outside lights, front and back. A body lay crumpled in the back yard, a bullet hole in the man’s head, the head swelled from the impact of the heavy .45 slug. Sam ran through the house, to the front door. A man lay writhing on the sidewalk, both hands holding his stomach, his blood pouring out through his fingers. The shotgun, slug-loaded, had hit him three times in the chest and belly. The man shivered, drummed his heels on the sidewalk, and died.
Jane Ann’s face was pale, but she grimly shoved shells into the shotgun, ready for another onslaught if need be. They both heard the sounds of sirens in the distance.
Sam shoved the .45 behind his belt, and strode to the hall closet, jerking open the door, reaching inside for the Thompson SMG. He slapped a clip in its belly and worked the bolt, chambering a round.
“Sam? That’s a machine gun!” Jane Ann said.
“It sure is. And I’ll bet you that’s Addison coming here. He’ll try to arrest me—or us. But I’ve got news for him: he’s not going to do it.”
Addison ran up the steps of the parsonage, stepped into the living room, then stopped cold in his tracks when he saw the Thompson in Sam’s hands. The muzzle lifted to the sheriff’s belly and Addison’s gut sucked inward.
“Stand in the hall and watch my back,” Sam told Jane Ann. “If anything—I mean anything—moves, shoot it.”
“Now, you wait just a minute,” Addison said, authority overcoming fright.
“Shut your damned mouth!” Sam barked at him. “I figured it all out, Addison. Me, and several others in this town. We know how it was done, and why. But it didn’t work with us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking . . .”
“Shut up, you son-of-a-bitch!” Sam raged. He was in no mood to act the preacher part. “I know all about the roads being closed. I know all about your Black Masses, and I know about Doctor Black Wilder—where he came from, what he is, and what he’s doing here. I don’t know why your ... possessed jumped the gun and started this night; you weren’t supposed to start this soon, and I imagine Wilder is furious with some of you. You spoiled his little game.”
“You’re under arrest for murder, Balon!”
Sam laughed at him, enjoying immensely the flush that spread over the man’s face. “You want to try to take me in, Walter. Come on.”
“My dear man,” a voice spoke from the front porch. An educated voice. “My, my, we did make a mistake with you, didn’t we?”
Black Wilder stepped into the room. He was immaculately dressed in dark suit, very white shirt, dark tie with a small knot, polished shoes. A medallion hung about his neck. He smiled at Sam, then cut his eyes to Walter. “You may leave now,” he said. “And drag those bodies away from this house. They offend me. You know where to take them.” His voice sharpened. “Get out!”
Addison hung his head in obedience, his eyes fearful. “Yes, Master.” He left the room.
“According to the book,” Sam spoke over his shoulder to Jane Ann, “there will be a woman with him. A dark-haired woman—a witch, Nydia. If you see her, shoot her.”
Wilder laughed. “Oh, no, no, my good man. My, you certainly are a violent one, aren’t you? Real Old Testament type. I can see why your God chose you.” He chuckled. “I can assure you, sir, more violence this night will not be necessary. Let me call Nydia in—please?”
Sam hesitated, then nodded, his finger on the trigger of the SMG.
“Nydia?” Wilder called. “Do come in. And do so very carefully. The young lady here,” his dark eyes swept Jane Ann’s body, and his eyes filled with lust, “has a most awesome-looking shotgun. And she knows how to use it. In your present form, at least on this night, you are susceptible to scarring, and I know how you pride your beauty. You do remember that musket ball in Fra
nce?”
“Why are you telling us this?” Sam asked. “Aren’t you afraid we’ll hurt her—or kill her?”
Wilder laughed. “No,” he shook his head. “You could hurt her, slightly, but you could not kill her. Or me.” His eyes took in the shotgun and Sam’s SMG. “At least not with those weapons, sir.”
The woman dressed in black walked stately into the room. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman Sam had ever seen. High, very full breasts, the pale cleavage exposed in her V-neck gown, the V just touching the darker area of nipple. Her hair was the blackest, matching her eyes. Her lips were full and red and moist.
“The V stands for virgin, I’m sure,”Jane Ann said sarcastically.
Nydia’s lips pulled back in a faint smile. “Only slightly amusing, dear.” Her eyes touched Sam, taking in his heavy musculature, shirtless. Her eyes drifted to his crotch, and she licked her lips. “I don’t suppose you’d allow me the pleasure of kissing you hello?” she smiled.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
She laughed, exposing dazzling white teeth. “I guessed as much.” She glanced at Jane Ann. “You spoiled my plans, dear. I wanted so very much to be the one to seduce your new husband.”
Startled, Jane Ann asked, “How did you know we were married?”
“I watched him make love to you yesterday afternoon, in the cottonwoods by that quaint little creek. Your technique is lacking, dear. There is more to making love than just having the man stick it in and grunt.”
“Crude bitch!” Wilder muttered. “Absolutely no class or breeding.”
“The bird that sang above us,” Sam remembered. “I didn’t recognize the call.”
“My, aren’t you the observant one?” Nydia smiled.
“Mr. Balon,” Wilder said, “why don’t you give up this fight? You can’t win; surely you see that?”
“I don’t see any such thing.”
Mr. Balon—you don’t like being called Reverend, do you? Mr. Balon,” Wilder pressed him, “let’s be civilized men about this upcoming confrontation. In this area of Fork County, we have over two thousand—two thousand, sir—men, women, and children who have pledged their hearts and souls to my Master. What do you have? Nine-ten people. Eleven, counting yourself. Those are impossible odds, sir.”
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