For a second, he thought he was a boy again, in his old bedroom. On the wall, three posters: Peter Frampton, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt, fading and tattered at the edges, the Scotch tape yellowed and peeling the paint from the wall. Don’t look at where they scrubbed the walls, he told himself, don’t look over there. You don’t want to see what is over there. Don’t look where you last saw your mother, either, where there’s probably a stain. Don’t see anything that’s going to hurt too much. On the dresser, apparently ancient bottles of British Sterling and Old Spice, exactly where he had left them when he was eighteen. His twenty-gallon aquarium on the bookshelf, empty now, thrust between his leather-bound copy of the Thousand And One Nights, and Herman Wouk’s Youngblood Hawke.
It wasn’t until he saw Aaron’s black denim jacket on the chair that he started sobbing. He had just bought Aaron a sweatshirt, too, which Aaron wore to bed that night. Aaron’s duffel bag leaned in a corner, full of wadded-up socks and underwear, jeans, and two extra pairs of sneakers. Didn’t Aaron know to put on his jacket? It would be cold out there.
(All your children, a voice inside him whispered, first Paul in the crib, and now Aaron and Hillary, and your wife, we took her, too. What is it you wish for Joe? Love? Happiness? Children? Family?)
Joe leaned against the pillow. He could smell Aaron’s hair there, as if Aaron had just gotten out of bed and was down the hall, in the bathroom. The smell of his hair was like shampoo and grease and Aaron.
Joe had to press his face into the pillow to control his tears.
Then, he awoke from this dream-within-a-dream, to the bedroom at Hopfrog’s house.
2.
After a while, he sat up and said, “No.”
He was almost disappointed that he had not lost his mind.
3.
Becky was sitting on the front porch, a large down jacket wrapped around her shoulders. She sipped from a cup of coffee. Virgil Cobb sat across from her, smoking a cigar.
Addressing no one, she nodded towards the sky, “Looks like snow, doesn’t it? It’s cold enough.”
“Last year it didn’t snow ‘til December first. Year before that, it was October,” Virgil said.
Joe stood, hugging the quilt to him, staring at both of them. “It has my kids.”
Becky glanced up. “Joe.”
It was unspoken, what she seemed on the verge of saying: You’re alive. Didn’t expect that from you at this point. Thought this might be too much for you, all the shock, the trauma, the nightmare. Good to see you up and running.
Something else, too:
All our children are gone, Joe, all of our children. Your tragedy’s no worse than anyone else’s, so quit complaining. And we’re all numb and dehumanized and traumatized and shocked shitless, so don’t expect much sympathy from this quarter.
“Temperature dropped last night,” Virgil said, blowing a smoke ring. “That’ll help, maybe.”
“You don’t know,” Joe said. “You don’t know. Nobody knows, do they?”
“Joe?” Becky could not manage a smile, but seemed to be trying hard. “You get some rest?”
“Nobody knows anything. This whole town’s a graveyard. We’re all dead. We might as well just go to that thing, that angel or vampire or Martian, or whatever it is. We might as well just let It have us, too.”
Virgil said, “Not everyone in town is dead. Hopfrog’s going out to see who’s left.”
“You happy about knowing it got your baby?” He pointed to the street. “You’ll just sit here drinking coffee while your baby’s . . .”
Becky set her cup down. Steam rose from it.
“What kind of mother are you?” Joe snorted. “You should’ve taken your baby and put him in the car and gotten the fuck out of here, if you were any kind of—”His thoughts rushed faster than his brain would allow them. His mouth couldn’t move in sync with the rest of him. He tried to fight the overwhelming urge to run, to run away as fast as he could from this awful place.
Becky spat, “Look, you may decide it’s better to be a lunatic, but I am trying to hold out hope that there’s a way I can find my son and make sure he’s unharmed. I don’t know how to do that, but I know it is not by ranting and raving.” Then, she calmed. “I did all my screaming and crying last night. We don’t know that Tad is dead, just like we don’t know that your family is dead, either. Why was it you found your mother’s body, but not your wife’s? Maybe they got away, Joe. Maybe they got out.”
Joe went inside and got a pack of cigarettes, hidden in his black denim jacket’s inside pocket. He lit one and went back out to where the others waited. He passed a cigarette to Becky and they began chain-smoking until the pack was gone. “Sorry about the outburst. I’m just nuts now.”
Becky accepted the apology. “I promised Hopfrog I would help. We’ll do what you two did the last time. We’ll take them apart one by one. We’ll stop it somehow. If there’s a chance that Tad’s alive, or your family.”
“No,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “We won’t. We’ll die and become like them, some kind of storage tank for that thing that lives down in the mines.”
“We can’t leave, anyway,” she said, walking to the edge of the porch. “Not until we stop whatever’s doing this. Whatever has Tad. And your children. How can you be sure they’re dead? I don’t believe they’re dead.”
Joe wanted to tell her what he thought, that they were dead, dead and now vampiric corpses, and maybe tonight they’d come for him and for her and for Virgil and for Hopfrog.
But he knew that he had to stay.
“The phones haven’t come up yet,” Virgil Cobb said. “One of us could drive over to Stone Valley, but what would we say? ‘Everyone’s dead in Colony, and all the children are taken. It wasn’t the Pied Piper who did it, but some creature living beneath John Feely’s property.’ Well,” he huffed, “That might take a while to convince them. Three hours up and back over icy roads, and then three days before they get their rear ends over here to check it out.”
Joe shrugged. “Or they might throw whoever told them in jail.”
“And meanwhile,” Becky said, softly, “My little boy dies.”
4.
Hopfrog was back by two and Becky helped him into his chair from the car.
“Anything?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’d like to tell you that everyone’s fine, but if someone besides us is alive in Colony, they’re hiding really good. I tried the stores. I tried six different streets. There’re some tire treads out by the Paramount Bridge which lead me to believe some folks got out. Maybe they’ll spread the word. Maybe they’re too crazed to do much of anything. I hope they got out.” Hopfrog had become good at hiding tears. He closed his eyes. “My cousins, all of them, Becky: Kyle and Frankie and Janie, all of them. I found Frankie sleeping under his own bed, blood across his mouth. Eight years old. Now, one of them. I had to, God,” he began, but was silenced by a gasp that seemed to come from within his soul.
When he’d recovered, he continued. “I drove a spike through each of their bodies to ensure that they would not come back tonight.”
Becky hugged him. She drew warmth from that ragged place inside herself and offered it to him with that embrace, pressing her face against his neck.
“I’ve got to go find Tad. Maybe if we get to him before dark, he’ll be alive. Maybe there’s a chance . . .” His voice died the way the wind died, all at once. Then, he told her to go look at the back of his car.
Becky stepped around, shielding her eyes, and looked through the dark glass. “Jesus, what the hell is all this?”
“An arsenal. I collected it from about six different houses. Miles Fauvier had the Uzi.”
“The gallery owner? Jesus.” She shook her head, started laughing. “It looks like Los Angeles or New York, not West Virginia.”
She looked back at him with such a warm smile her face. After all the sadness and frustration of the night, it was like sun, seeing her like this. He alm
ost said it. Almost. Becky, I can’t make it without you. I love you. You are the only woman for me. Then her face sharpened. “I thought weapons wouldn’t work on it. I thought we knew that.”
“Maybe not on it, but what it does to the kids -- their corpses. We can at least stop them from getting us. Becky, they’re like wild dogs. For all we know, they’re hiding all over this town. Or down in the graves at Watch Hill. Just waiting for night.” Hopfrog leaned back in his chair, drawing the collar of his leather jacket up around his neck and ears. He whispered, “I love you.”
“What?” she asked, moving closer to him, kneeling beside him (which always made him feel like a baby, only now it felt good).
“Nothing,” he said, feeling warm wherever she touched him.
She looked him in the eye. “We have to go find Tad. I won’t let him die.”
“I know. We’ll go soon.”
“You think he’s already dead, don’t you?”
“No.”
“I can tell you do. But I don’t. I’m his mother. I know he’s still alive.”
Hopfrog wheeled back towards the porch. Virgil Cobb nodded to him. “Mr. Petersen, good morning.”
“I got some guns and gasoline,” Hopfrog said. “I think we can set fire to most of the houses. If they’re in there, we can shoot them when they come out. I have these.” He tossed an assortment of spikes and screwdrivers, hammers and mallets, onto the round patio table. “From my woodshop. If we’re going to kill some vampires, we might as well do it in style. As I recall from stopping one of these vampires in my youth, a good Phillips head number six does the job, and isn’t as hard to make as a genuine stake. Between these and the bullets, I figure we have a chance.”
“Silver bullets,” Virgil said. “They follow the rules of mythology. Silver bullets and stakes through the heart and crucifixes. I don’t know why they do.”
“Yeah.” Hopfrog shook his head, wondering how far from sanity they all were at this point. He half expected witches and trolls beneath bridges and goblins and ghosties. “Joe’s inside?”
“Went for a walk,” Virgil said. “Just ten minutes ago. Said he wanted to think about things. I told him you’d be back soon, and then we could start.”
“Isn’t it weird,” Hopfrog said. “Only us.”
“Only us?”
“Only us. Nobody else. A town of nearly two thousand, small by any standards, but a hell of a lot of people anyway. It looks like Guyana out there, or Waco. I found bodies piled like stones, drained of blood. No children. It has all the children now. But of all those people, you, me, Joe, Becky—why?”
Virgil said, “Maybe because we saw the creature’s face once. Or maybe we have something that scares it that nobody else has. Maybe we have a power we don’t even know about.”
“Or maybe we’re dessert,” Hopfrog said.
5.
Joe was careful to avoid the slick edges of the road where the ice had not melted to slush. He put one foot in front of the other.
Got to keep moving. You stop moving, you die. You die, you can’t help your kids. If your kids are still alive. If your kids are still alive, you’ve got to go down that well in that barn and face whatever it was you couldn’t stop when you were a kid.
The sky was bright and still clouded over to the east. Storm clouds, gray on the underside, white on the edges. The air had that clean, strong smell that came just before snow. He was walking along the road, trying to think, but his mind was still not up to speed. He was a jumble of fears and images: Melissa, Jenny, mother, house, river, bridge, truck, car, blood, dragon, crucifix, ankh. He stopped, pressing his fists against the side of his head.
Just two days ago. He didn’t have to come back. He could’ve sent a plane ticket for his mother. He could’ve come home by himself, and then Jenny would still be alive, Aaron and Hillary would still be playing in the den at home.
If only . . . the two most miserable words in the English language. If only.
Clouds swept across the sun, and for one horrific moment, Joe thought night was descending soon, that the world had spun out of its orbit and had plunged into darkness.
When he glanced at the muted sun, it briefly took him out of his sorrow.
Heaven. He had never thought much about it before; he had never really believed in it. If the world is so horrible a place, there must be one, or why even hope for it? It may not be paved with gold or have pearly gates, but there must be some peaceful, happy place for those for whom life is misery.
The sun broke through the clouds. He felt that it was a sign from the universe to continue, to fight the vampire, to not cower at Its enormity.
6.
When Joe returned to the others, he had a plan.
He told them. “We have a couple of hours until dark. We’ve wasted too much time. Hop, you and Virgil go round up some crosses. Becky, we’ll go get some food, since we don’t know what kind of night we’re going to have, and we’ve got to stock up for the long haul.”
“Okay, but, what—we go rip off all the churches?” Hopfrog asked.
“We won’t have to”—Virgil drew his tweed overcoat around his shoulders—“John Feely must’ve had three hundred crucifixes all over the place at his house. Even if most of them are destroyed, we can probably find more there in his closets than in all three churches here in town.”
Virgil and Hopfrog took off in Virgil’s Honda Civic.
Becky said, “Who needs food? I don’t care if I ever eat again. We’re going to die, Joe. Our children are dead, and we are going to die.”
Joe tossed his arm across her shoulder and said, “Now you’re the pessimist. I guess that’s healthy. But I had a sign from the heavens today. And you know what it said?”
She shook her head.
“It said, ‘It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.’ We stock up on food today, and tonight”—he let go of her, and led the way outside—“I’m gonna whup some vampire butt.”
Becky stared at him, shocked.
“I know,” he said, “I’m crazy. I’m running on empty and I’m running scared. I’m probably teetering on the edge of sanity. But, you know what? I’m just going go with it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE HUNT BEFORE DARK
1.
The weird part was, Colony looked normal outwardly, as if this were an afternoon right after lunch, before the workday was through, before children were released from school, when silence prevailed. Each street met neatly with another, each corner squared with its partner. There was no apparent damage, except for the occasional corpse in the street, but even these few seemed somehow to fit in with the sleepy winter atmosphere. “I don’t even feel afraid anymore,” Becky said. “It’s as if the whole world just changed.”
“I’m not quite to that point yet,” Joe said, feeling in his pockets for anything that might remotely resemble a cigarette. “You got a smoke, Beck?”
“Left my purse at home,” she responded, and then giggled. When she started giggling too much, he pulled over to the curb. They were on Princess Anne Street, right across from the movie theater.
Her giggles died out. He said, “You gonna make it?”
“I don’t know. Let’s break in to the market.”
This is actually the fun part, Joe thought. They got out of the Buick Skylark; he didn’t even bother parking particularly well.
Logan’s Market was another block up, and he supposed he could’ve moved the car forward, but what the hell? A little walk’ll do us good.
He was still a bit wary, too. He had armed himself with a small cross; Becky had a tiny one on a chain around her neck. “It was my mother’s. Lucky for me, she was a good Irish Catholic girl.”
“Got your spike?” he asked.
She held it up. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to drive it into one of them, even if they are the undead, Joe, they still look like kids.”
“After a couple,” he said, “You get used to it.”
Walking up a blo
ck, they saw curtains drawn at all the apartments above the shops. “I bet they’re resting up for tonight,” Joe rubbed his hands together for warmth. “You know what’s sad?”
“Joe. After all this.”
“No, I mean sad in a goofy way.”
“All right: what?”
“I was beginning to like this place. I was beginning to remember all the good stuff.”
Neither of them spoke again for a while, even while Joe smashed a rock into the glass door of Logan’s Market. He opened the door for her and quickly flicked on the fluorescent lights before she was halfway through.
Becky got a shopping cart. The two of them went down the aisles, tossing everything from toilet paper to apple juice into the cart. When they passed the checkout counter, Joe grabbed seven packs of Marlboro Light 100’s and stuffed them into his coat pockets.
“Paper or plastic?” he asked as they began bagging their loot.
Becky’s face was horribly altered, and he only just noticed it. She was old now, old the way people got old when life turned on them, old and curdled like milk. Joe knew that he was the same, too. That this wasn’t just going to end and they’d bounce back from it.
This was it. Even if they survived and destroyed the monster, this was it. Life was never going to be fine or good again.
Don’t think about Jenny or Hillary or Aaron or Mom.
Think about survival
“He was just a little boy,” Becky said, her face crumpling, almost caving in. But no tears, not even a trace of wetness in her eyes—she could cry no more.
Joe stuffed the fruit and fresh vegetables into the paper bags.
2.
“Look at that,” Hopfrog said, lowering himself from the car to the ground.
“You need some help? I can get your chair,” Virgil said.
“Sure, thanks, yeah,” Hopfrog said. He was dragging his legs, using his muscular arms to propel him forward towards John Feely’s barn. “Yeah, sometimes the chair is good. But look at that. At least we know the kids haven’t gotten in there.”
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