What was left of the little savage horde retreated outside.
“My God, Nick!” Shari called, standing in the open front door. “Come here. Quick. You have to get this!”
They all watched as Colonel Richelieu’s men charged the retreating little people, boxing them in on both ends of the street. The moon was bright and full, shining down on the strange and macabre scene, giving enough light for Nick to shoot.
“I’ve never seen the moon that full and bright,” Jim allowed, his voice a whisper. “It’s almost like day out there.”
“Some will surely get away and tell others where we are,” Amy said.
“Yeah.” Jay carefully stepped around the bloody and body-littered floor.
“I’m just about out of tape,” Nick said, lowering the mini-cam. He reloaded and handed the rig to Shari.
He turned and looked out at the street, watching as the colonel’s men engaged the others in savage battle. Bushes rattled to his right. He looked down and managed one hoarse scream before hands grabbed his ankles.
Jay grabbed him by his film belt and hung on as the hands tried to pull Nick off the porch.
The belt broke, and Nick was jerked into the shrubbery. Jay tossed the belt to Shari, his right hand full of .357 mag. He frantically searched for a target, but was afraid he’d hit Nick.
Then he saw more of the products of Victory’s incestuous evil, crouching naked and grinning up at him, smiling as they were tearing great hunks of flesh from Nick, stuffing their mouths with the bloody raw meat.
Jay shot one between the eyes. The other one scurried off into the darkness by the corner of the house. Jim ended his evil grinning with one blast from his shotgun.
“Let’s get out of here!” Jim called. “Out the back. We’ll hunt us another hole.”
“The keys are in this car!” Amy yelled from the side of the house. “Come on, let’s go!”
She had the car cranked as they piled in; the doors hardly closed before she was backing out of the drive.
Amy accelerated rapidly, her hands sweaty on the steering wheel. She looked up as the headlights picked up a dozen men and women, arms linked, stretching across the street.
“Ram them, Amy!” Jim shouted.
Amy pressed the gas pedal to the floor and roared through the line of humans. They knew it was a human chain as the blood splattered on the hood and windshield. Wet eyeballs slammed against the windshield and clung there, staring blindly at the men and women inside.
“Get them off!” Amy screamed.
The eyeballs moved, looking at her.
Jim reached over and turned on the windshield wiper and washers. The eyeballs plopped to the street.
A rock smashed against the rear window of the car. A young man ran into the path of the car and jumped onto the hood, the force of the speeding car causing him to smash through and land in the front seat, torn and bleeding.
Amy lost control of the car and bounced off the road and over the curb, crashing into the front porch of a house.
“Anybody hurt?” Jay yelled.
Bruised, but not hurt, they all piled out of the car. Something fluttering in the night breeze caught Stoner’s attention. He picked up the small book – a Bible. He stood in the yard and looked at the small Bible.
“Bastard!” Kelly screamed from the side of the ruined house. Stoner looked up. Kelly threw a sharpened stick at him, the stick striking him squarely in the stomach and driving through. With a cry of pain, the little doctor sank to his knees. Jim triggered off a fast round, but Kelly had already vanished into the night.
Groaning, Stoner said, “Never mind me ... get her. Destroy them. It’s the kids! I know now. It’s the kids!”
Jim and Jay circled the house, pistols cocked. But no kids could be found. When they returned to the front yard, Shari and Amy were kneeling beside Stoner, who was still on his knees, the spear end protruding bloody out of his back.
Amy and Shari were crying.
“Look . . . what I ... found,” Stoner said, blood leaking out of his mouth. He lifted the Bible. “It... seems very appropriate. Listen.”
He had opened the Bible to Psalms. His voice very weak, Stoner read: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let them also that hate him flee before him.
“As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.”
The Bible dropped from his hands. Stoner put his face on the cool dewy ground and died.
Jay picked up the Bible and put it in his back pocket. “He was a good man, Lord,” he said. “He was a very good man.”
8
Using the mini-cam, Shari took some shots of Stoner. She lifted the camera just as Jim spoke.
“You’ll want this, too.” He was pointing up the street.
They turned. The street was filled with silent staring men and women, several hundred of them. They began chanting, “Clute, die! Clute, die! Clute, die!”
“Guess they’ve decided I’m not worth the effort to take alive.” Jay’s voice was husky with exhaustion. His eyes found Kelly, Jenny, and Piper, standing near the crowd, but not a part of it.
“Too far away for a shot,” the trooper muttered.
The mob began lifting their feet and stamping the concrete, marching in place and chanting, “Clute, die! Clute, die!”
“Look at the other end of the street,” Amy said.
Carla, Andy, Ken, and Robert stood with Gibson’s gang and about a hundred other kids, ranging in age from nine or ten to their late teens. They stood silently, watching and grinning.
Then one tall youth dragged a blanket-covered object out and tossed it to the ground. Shari triggered the mini-cam as the blanket was lifted, exposing the body of Father Pat. Another body was dragged out. General Douglas. What was left of Nick was tossed onto the street.
“That’s it.” Shari wearily dropped the mini-cam. “I’m empty.”
Jay had repaired the broken film belt and tied it securely around his waist. “I got an idea.”
They looked at him.
“Let’s get out of here!”
As one, what was left of the group turned and ran into the darkness. With a roar, the crowd lunged forward.
Even though Jay and Jim were still armed with plenty of ammunition, they knew that the two of them had no chance of stopping the raging mob with only two weapons; they could only run until they dropped from exhaustion.
They stumbled through the darkness, the chanting mob behind them.
“This way!” A tiny voice was heard. “We’ll cover your retreat.”
Through a muddy haze of weariness, the four of them saw Colonel Richelieu standing on the hood of a car. “Take the vehicle and go!” He slid down the fender and waved them into the car.
“What about you?” Jay asked, his voice slurry from exhaustion.
The colonel grinned. “We’re free. Death will be a most welcome thing for us. Now go!”
They jumped into the car and roared out into the street. Soon the mob was left far behind. But no matter which road they turned on, trying to get out of town, they found their way blocked.
“They’re playing games with us,” Amy said, her voice thick from weariness. “It’s just a game to them.”
Jay turned around and drove back toward town, stopped when the city limits sign came into view.
“What now?” Shari asked.
“We start walking. I think that’s our only chance of maybe one of us getting out of this hellhole.”
“How’s your hand?” Jim asked him.
“Numb. Useless. I think some of the tendons may have been sliced through.”
“Which way do we head?”
“North. The Gasconade River is only a few miles away. We may be able to swipe a boat and cross it. But we gotta get clear of Victory first.”
Jim’s only reply was a grunt. Jay turned to see the trooper falling face first to the ground, a knife sticking out of his back. A ch
ild’s laughter sprang out of the night.
“Now get them!” A girl’s voice cracked out the command. Jay knew that voice. Ange.
“Kids!” Amy called. “Don’t do this to us.”
“Die!” Carla’s voice penetrated the darkness.
Using the last of his strength, Jim lifted his. 357 and jacked the hammer back. The pistol roared in the night. A small figure was hurled backward as the slug hit the girl in the chest.
“Get back, get back!” Carla called. Scurrying sounds drifted to the tiny group, now numbering three.
Jay knelt down beside the trooper. Jim turned his head and smiled at him. “Hell of a way . . . to check out, isn’t it, buddy?”
When he had fallen to the ground, he had twisted, falling on the handle, driving the knife deeper into his back.
Jim closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.
With a cry of rage, Amy picked up his pistol and walked into the darkness, ignoring the calls from Jay and Shari.
Kids waving long knives rushed the young woman. Amy emptied the mag, almost losing the powerful pistol with each shot.
Shari had dug into her purse and produced a tiny tape recorder. She spoke into it. Jay could catch only a few of the words.
Amy screamed. Jay jerked Shari to her feet and the two of them ran into the night.
Behind them, Amy was being hacked to death by kids with machetes and axes.
Something out of a wino’s nightmare loomed up in front of them: a twin brother to that creature Jay had seen on the road that night, with Deva. It seemed like a hundred years ago.
He shot the grotesque being in the chest and kept on running, Shari hanging onto his belt.
All around them, bobbing lights had appeared, the lights forming a waving, ill-defined circle, a circle of death that was slowly closing around them.
Then the earth opened up and seemed to swallow them. Both of them were too shocked to scream as they fell tumbling into darkness.
So this is death, Jay thought. Odd, there is no pain. None at all. There is –
Nothing.
He fell into what he guessed was eternity.
* * *
The painful throbbing in his left hand brought him back to awareness. He ached all over, especially his head. And what was wedged up close to him? He was afraid to even guess as the events of the past days rushed back to him.
He opened his eyes and saw the matted blond hair of Shari, her head on his chest.
He put his hand on her neck and she jerked awake, her eyes wide and staring at him. Light. Where was that light coming from? He tilted his head back. Above them, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet, a hole in the ground.
Jay remembered that a lot of very unproductive mines were sunk in this part of the state, a long time back. That’s where they had tumbled.
Shari put a finger to her lips and pointed up toward the hole. She whispered, “I haven’t heard any voice in ... well, I don’t know how long. Hours, I guess. They searched for us until dawn.”
“Is that when you fell asleep?”
“Shortly after that. The sun is just about straight up in the sky, so it must be close to noon.”
Jay felt for his pistol. Gone. But the belt of film was still around his waist.
“I hope you’re not as thirsty as I am, Shari.”
“I don’t even want to talk about it.” She looked up at the hole. “How are we going to get out of here, Jay?”
Then everything came rushing to him. Deva, Piper, the girls. The rest of the kids. Jim, Amy, Stoner – all of them.
Jay started to move. Shari pushed him back down. “Be careful, Jay. We’re on a ledge of some sort. The way it’s cut, I think it’s man-made.”
Jay looked around them and agreed. “It’s the first tier of a mine.”
“Then there’ll be some steps up?”
“No. They probably used some sort of lift, steam or mule driven.” He turned carefully and began feeling the rock area above him. His hand closed around the thick links of a rusted chain.
“There it is.” He pulled as hard as he could. The chain was secure.
“You can climb out easily, Shari.”
She stared at him. “And you?”
“I can’t climb it one-handed.”
She smiled strangely. “I bet you will, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
She picked up a small stone and dropped it off the ledge. It was as if a thousand buzzers went off.
Jay knew that sound. Rattlesnakes.
“Nesting grounds,” he said, his throat suddenly very dry. “Start climbing, Shari. When you reach the top, don’t stick your head out all the way. Do it very cautiously.”
The young woman scampered up the chain with surprising agility. Jay froze as something slithered over his ankle. The snake paused halfway across, and Jay almost had a heart attack. To come this far and die from a snake bite was almost hysterically funny to him. He had to bite his lip to keep from screaming. With a silent ripple of muscle, the snake moved on.
“I can’t see anyone or anything, Jay.”
“All right. Coming up.”
Using his feet to assist him, Jay slowly and painfully inched up the chain. He was halfway up when he felt something give at the other end. Probably the old eyebolt was working out of the wood or concrete. Jay chanced a look downward.
With the sun almost directly overhead, the beam was strong through the hole in the earth. What was probably hundreds of rattlers looked to Jay like millions beneath him. What if he slipped, or the chain broke?
“I wedged it firm with an old piece of iron, Jay. Come on. I think it’s going to hold. I’m holding on to it, too.”
Jay made the remaining ten or so feet very quickly.
Squatting by the hole in the ground, Jay cautiously looked around him. “That’s the Gasconade over there.”
They looked at each other. Both were dirty and ragged and bloody. Shari’s shirt and jeans were torn. Jay’s T-shirt was ripped. But the film belt was still around his waist.
“I know where we are, now,” Jay said, looking around. “I remember this place. Used to be warning signs all over this area. Victory is about five miles that way.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
Holding hands, both of them limping, they walked toward the willows that lined the banks of the river.
* * *
They followed the Gasconade to the outskirts of Mount Sterling. Skirting the town, they came up on Highway 50 and began walking, toward Jefferson City.
A deputy sheriff burned about fifteen dollars’ worth of rubber off his back tires sliding to a halt when he spotted them. He jumped out of his unit.
“What the hell! ...”
“You ever watch the evening news, deputy?” Shari asked.
“What? Ah ... yes! I know you. Ma’am – ”
She cut him off. “Deputy, we’ve both been assaulted, kidnapped, and left for dead. A Missouri State Trooper who tried to help us is dead. My cameraman is dead. A priest is dead, a doctor is dead, a retired general is dead . . .” The deputy was staring at her. “Now how fast can you get us to Jeff City and the state police headquarters?”
Pretty swift.
They were soon joined by two more county units and two highway patrol units.
Over the wail of sirens, Jay took her hand. “It’ll never be over, Shari. Not for us. You realize that now, don’t you?”
She nodded her head. She tapped on the cage that separated the front from the back of the county unit.
“Yes, ma’am?” the deputy yelled over the sirens.
“Did you get in touch with my boss in St. Louis?”
“State police did, ma’am. He’s on his way in a corporate jet. It’ll take him longer to get to the airport in St. Louis than it will to get to Jeff City.”
“Thank you, deputy. You stick around when we get to Jeff City. I want you on tape so the whole country can see you.”
The deputy smiled. “Yes,
ma’am.”
“This story could land you a job in New York City, Shari,” Jay said. “You damn sure won’t be safe in this part of the country.”
“Would I be safer in New York?”
“I don’t really know. But somebody is going to be coming after us.”
Neither was cognizant of the fact the deputy had turned off the siren and was listening, committing as much of their conversation as possible to memory.
Shari put her hand in Jay’s. “A lady could get attached to you. Of course, after spending the night in a cave full of rattlesnakes, anything would look good.”
The deputy’s eyes widened.
“Are you propositioning me, lady?”
“Could be.”
“Y’all known each other long?” the deputy asked.
“Couple of days,” Jay replied.
The deputy was silent for the rest of the trip. He kept muttering under his breath about New Yorkers.
9
It was past midnight before all the statements had been taken and the cops – county, state, and federal – had viewed the tapes for the umpteenth time. Jay had refused to go to the hospital; a doctor had come to state police headquarters and looked at Jay’s hand. He had cleaned the wound and bandaged it, given Jay a couple of shots, and told him he would have to have an operation, and soon, if he was to regain full use of the hand.
Jay and Shari had been placed in protective custody, and the tapes seized. There would be no press on the story for awhile.
“That’s communism!” Shari’s boss yelled at the colonel of state police. “By God, those tapes are station property and I demand you release them to me immediately!”
“Would you like to accompany us to Victory in a few hours?” the colonel asked.
“You’re damn right!”
“In or out of iron?”
Absolutely amazing what a tone of voice can do.
* * *
First light. Outside of Victory.
“It’s Jim, all right, Colonel. Just like they told us.”
A trooper walked up to the car. He was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “We found . . . what was left of the girl they called Amy, Colonel. She’s been hacked to pieces. Couple of dead kids nearby.”
Toy Cemetery Page 26
