Son of the Endless Night, page 36
"Can't you watch where you're— Gina!"
Gina pushed herself up off the front end of the cart laden with shopping bags and tossed her hair from her eyes; she looked at the face of an acquaintance from Blessed Sacrament parish, Louise Briggens. They had served on committees together. Louise was inclined to be high-handed. She had six kids and a butt like the beam of a tugboat.
"Hello, Louise."
"What— what are you doing with that gun?" Louise said, her artificially blond eyebrows arching nearly to the top of her forehead.
"Louise, is this your car?"
"No, mine's the Cutlass Supreme over there. Gina, are you— "
"I need to borrow your car, Louise. Mine won't start, and he's getting away. Give me the keys to your car."
"THE KEYS TO MY— "
Gina leveled the revolver at her.
"I don't have time to argue with you, Louise. My daughter has been kidnapped and he's still able to drive, I don't know how, I shot him in the head. That means he's not human; you see what I'm up against? And there's no one to help me." She had begun to whine; she got her voice under control and squared her shoulders. "Are the keys in your purse? Give me your purse, Louise. I'm going to get my daughter back and I swear before God I'll shoot you, too, if you don't do what I tell you."
Louise Briggens's eyebrows waggled up and down, like birds born in cages trying vainly to fly; she trembled and made gagging sounds and, abruptly, vomited all over a head of cauliflower at the top of one of her grocery sacks.
While the woman was thus distracted Gina snatched her drawstring purse from her right wrist and ran with it to the cream-colored Cutlass Supreme which Louise thoughtfully had pointed out before she became so ill. Gina found the keys and tossed the purse aside, unlocked the Cutlass, and climbed in. Louise had fallen to her knees beside her shopping cart; she was being gaudily hysterical. Gina paid no attention to her. There was a film of perspiration on her upper lip, emphasizing the pale growth of hair she had there. Her eyes behind her driving glasses were bleak, but the red could rise in them, terrifyingly, in an instant, as Louise Briggens had observed.
Gina put her revolver down again where it would be handy and backed out of the space, went zipping across the parking lot to the Route 38 exit on the other side of the building, heedless of lane markings. The car radio was on, blasting FM rock from four speakers. Iron Maiden. Black Sabbath. Death Freak. Louise Briggens revealed as a secret heavy-metal addict. The shrill music suited Gina's sense of urgency, the doom in her mood.
Gina paid no attention to the flow of traffic against her, just leaned on the horn and let fly across three lanes and the bumpy median.
She was up to sixty in a matter of seconds, weaving perilously in and out past slow movers in the nearly-new car as the road curved uphill away from the commercial area and the land became semirural, a mix of small orchards, shabby roadside businesses and woodlots, housing developments of one or two streets carved into the hillsides. It was four miles to Chopick Pond, no major intersections along the way. Gina called aloud to the patron saints of both sides of the family, and stood on it.
62
The bullet that Gina had fired into the head of Richards had scarcely been slowed by thicknesses of skull and the plump package of brain tissue in between. It had been deflected twice, first by bone and then by the steering wheel, deforming each time until it resembled a chunk of metallic mushroom. The enlarged slug passed through the thin plastic shield of the instrument panel just to the left of the odometer and the 40 KPH marking and then through the firewall, ending up in the fuel pump, where it began to cause trouble almost immediately for the partly brainless driver. But Richards needed neither brain nor central nervous system to continue to function until he had fulfilled the purpose for which he had been created: he needed only hands and feet, which could be guided rather easily by the controlling entity.
The blue Toyota was another matter. Unlike the body of Richards, it was not a realistic and highly detailed materialization. Its riddled fuel pump spurted gas prodigiously; the car began to labor and smoke and slow down short of the intended rendezvous on the isolated east shore of Chopick Pond. Richards was made to pull the car off Route 38 immediately. But by then Gina had caught up and was right behind it, honking her horn, her view obscured by the billowing smoke coming from beneath the hood of the Toyota as both cars bumped along a narrow unpaved lane with walls of dirty snow on either side.
The lane meandered for two and a half miles down to the icebound shore of the pond with only a few summer cottages and one structure of any size along the way: a rambling wooden building constructed by enthusiastic but amateur carpenters with no sense of proportion. There was a snow-clogged parking lot in front of it, a stone gateway. This was the summer retreat of the Right Way Gospel and True Testimony Pentecostal Church. An imposing but somewhat road-weary green tractor-trailer truck was parked sideways behind the gate, its cab tilted forward over the front axle. A lanky mechanic wearing an arc-welder's mask and wielding a blue-tongued torch failed to look up as the two cars passed by on the lonely lane; but other eyes observed them.
63
"Buddy Buck," Zipporah said, pausing to take a peek through the curtained porthole above the bunk which she shared with her lover, "I believe that car went by us just now was on fire!"
"Zipporah," Buddy Buck Mayhew groaned, "what difference does it make at a time like this? Now you gone and lost the stroke."
"Well, I'm sorry; but I think it's our Christian duty to help our neighbors when they're in trouble."
"We don't have no neighbors up here, Zipporah. We just borrowed the church parking lot long enough for Sedalia to fix them rods."
"Jesus said— "
"Zipporah, now don't talk to me about Jesus when I'm fixin' to come. It makes me feel nasty."
"All right," she murmured, subdued. Her trim little bottom had ceased to waggle in ecstasy; Buddy Buck paused and said imploringly, "Ain't I doin' you no good, honey?"
"Well, you were, but then you touched me with your fingers and, you know, your fingers are always s'cold lately. Toes too. That's a real turn-off."
"I can't help it if my fingers get cold. We are for sure in a cold climate."
"I don't know why we had to come all the way up here to Massachusetts this time the year. I just can't get used to all the snow and the ice. And my throat's been sore for a week, no lie. I'm afraid I'll lose my voice. I wish we could just forget about it and go on back to Alabama. We were doin' s'good down home."
"Forget it? Forger it? Honey, I realize it's colder 'n polar bear poop, but you got to remember one thing: the devil don't sleep and he don't hibernate neither. And he ain't gonna hide way up here from Buddy Buck Mayhew. God's Warrior on Wheels. Hallelujah!"
"Couldn't we just a gone coast to coast through Louisianner and Texas?"
"This is the ideal place to start our First Annual Interstate Crusade. The devil come over to this country on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims, and he ain't left yet. Didn't you never read about the Salem witch trials?"
"Oh, yes, believe I did. That all happened around here?" Zipporah shivered dramatically.
"Sure it did. I may have done a little time at the crossbar hotel before I come to be washed in the Blood of the Lamb, but that don't mean I'm ignorant. I know there's plenty of souls to be saved in Massachusetts, if we can just get 'em to come outdoors. Besides, if folks don't see me they ain't gonna want to listen to me on the radio. And if I don't have no national radio exposure, I'll spend the rest of my life tryin' to get more'n forty miles from Sylacauga."
"Why Buddy Buck, you just shrunk down to a nubbin."
He said disconsolately, "You know I like it without a lot of conversation, Zipporah."
"I'm sorry. Why don't we rest awhile. We already done it twice before breakfast."
"No, it's too cold to lay around. I'll put some clothes on and give Sedalia a hand with them repairs. We got to be at the Motorama Top Wheels and Deals lot no later 'n four thirty."
"It just don't seem right to me to be preachin' the gospel while all around us they is sellin' used cars at the same time."
"All of Cousin Bob Pike's used cars got good warranties on 'em, and besides we're gonna be seen live on TV during the commercial interruptions. You know how many people still watch them Starsky and Hutch reruns in these parts? It's what they call in show business a big media break. Praise God."
Zipporah had stepped down from the low bunk in the little stateroom of their Peterbilt trailer, her fair skin all goosebumps, her big brown eyes wide with a kind of apprehension. Her hands were joined supportively under stupendous breasts, which, should she choose to stand naked beneath a high-noon sun, would cast enough shade to cover all of her lower body and a couple of dogs snoozing at her feet.
"Buck, you know what?"
"I know," he said affectionately, "if Dolly Parton could get a good look at you standin' sideways she'd just waller right down into a big puddle a envy."
"No, no. I heard somethin', way off yonder. Like a dynamite explosion. You didn't hear that?"
"How could I, when I'm partial deaf in my right ear?" He gave her a generous pat on the rump as he reached for his long underwear.
64
The blue Toyota was burning fiercely under the hood when it finally jolted off the road and sank up to the front bumper at the edge of a meadow brimming with crusty snow.
Gina slammed her borrowed Cutlass to a stop a few yards away and got out, the revolver in her hand.
She saw the door on the driver's side of the burning car open and the figure of Richards back out from behind the wheel. His shattered head was beclouded with dark smoke. He opened the rear door, jerkily, and reached inside with both arms. He reappeared holding the unconscious form of Hillary.
"Stop! Put her down!"
Richards, holding Hillary slack and lengthwise at the level of his stomach, turned toward her. Gina saw him better, and wished she hadn't. He had no forehead, only a fist-sized pit in the cranium from his eyebrows to his temples. The rose-tinted glasses hung to one side from a single temple bar, an intact ear. So much blood had poured down his face— and continued to hang from the jawline in cooling strings and gobbets— that his head suggested a jellyfish hobbling in a hazy sea. An eye incapable of focus jiggled in that red mass. The other eye had disappeared.
Richards turned around and around, floundering in the deep snow, as if trying to get his bearings, as if he were homing in on a supernatural signal of some kind. Gina appraised all this horror with lunatic coolness, her mind on the Toyota, which she was afraid would explode, drenching the walking dead man and her daughter in flames.
But perhaps Hillary, too, was dead: she seemed so drained and lifeless.
"Hillary!" Gina screamed, her voice echoing, rebounding from the hard gray pavement of the sky, the frozen lake and deserted woods that enclosed them.
Gina thought she saw the child's eyelids and pale lashes flutter. It was enough for her.
She plunged through the packed snow at the side of the road, not knowing what she could do, how she could stop this. But not to move, now, was to be frozen eternally, eclipsed by the evil that was trying to steal the girl. She raised the shiny revolver, but couldn't fire. What impression would another bullet make? In her anxiety she might hit Hillary.
He was walking away now, across the meadow, taking big strides, sinking down into drifts, rising up again with a surreal buoyancy, bearing Hillary on across the open meadow toward a hillock above the pond, a big stone barnlike structure surrounded by black trees that looked like worn-out paintbrushes standing bristles-up against the sky.
Gina, shorter by inches, had real problems wading after him through a winter's depth of snow. She was, very quickly, short of breath, no competition for the unbreathing thing that was putting distance between them, despite the weight he carried. There were scrappy birds in the air above the line of trees, the barn roof; Gina heard their raucous cries as expressions of triumph, of giddy welcome.
Fifty yards behind her the Toyota exploded with a dull whump; the day brightened momentarily and she felt a sear of heat against the back of her neck. She struggled on.
"OH, GOD! HELP ME!"
The shrieks of the wheeling birds intensified; some of them were flying out over the meadow. They looked larger, and threatening. Gina felt faint from exertion, from terror. She was losing ground rapidly. She had the feeling that if she lost sight of Hillary now she would never see her again.
He could move without his brains; but could he go anywhere with both knees shot out from under him?
Gina came to a stop beside a barkless frozen mass of windfall and leveled her revolver, using a jutting branch as a benchrest.
He was twenty yards directly ahead of her, moving slightly uphill. She fretted about a possible ricochet from a rock just beneath the snow, then shut her mind to thoughts of failure and aimed carefully, concentrating on squeezing the trigger slowly and evenly. She had been a good pupil, the best shot in her class. Don't jerk it, don't. . .
Gina fired. Missed.
Fired again. And missed. The difficulty of a moving target was new to her.
Trembling, dismayed, she broke down her stance, lowered the revolver, then started over.
Shot him in the left leg behind the knee.
The high-velocity slug nearly tore his lower leg off. He sprawled forward and Hillary was dumped, face down, in the snow.
Gina ran as fast as she could, tears of cold streaming from her eyes. The tears partially obscured her glimpses of a woman, dressed all in dark clothing, who stood motionless on the hill near the barn with her hair streaming long, like a black banner in the wind. Her eyes held all the darkness of a terrifying eternity.
This ominous figure, and the hue and cry of birds roosting in the leafless trees, flying up like bits of paper from a hot chimney, distracted Gina. Streaks of blood on the snow in front of her. The dead man clawing with both hands, trying to reach Hillary. His loathsome, acquisitive hand falling on an exposed thigh. With her lips bared to the gums in a grimace Gina fell to her knees beside her daughter, pulling Hillary away from his clutches. Hillary was breathing. Out of breath herself, Gina sat down for a few precious moments. She felt as if she were being watched, from behind, with curiosity and mounting displeasure. She didn't turn her head. She concentrated on praying for the strength to get Hillary away from there. Her prayers were curtly interrupted, washed from her mind by a black tide of hate.
She is ours now.
"No!" Now Gina turned, finger on the trigger of her revolver.
This time she saw nothing but the flocks of dark birds knitting themselves, wing to wing, into a huge shroud in the trees. Suddenly the dead man's hand was on her ankle, groping, tugging at the soaked suede boot. She kicked violently, pushed herself to her feet and pocketed the "revolver. She needed both hands for Hillary. The snow was stained all around them where the dead man crawled laboriously, and eerily without sound. Where had that hostile voice come from? The back of her neck felt frozen, not from the cold but from dread.
Gina, somehow, lifted Hillary. Once she could have sat her in the palm of her outstretched hand. Gina bawled. Her daughter was across her shoulders, bulky; she had a grip on her arms and legs. Fireman's carry, which she had learned in a paramedic course. She had carried a full-grown man across the gym and back. Applause. No snow then. No added weight of fear. The car seemingly a lifetime's journey across the meadow, and no way to go except back the way she had come. The snow broken down some, a path of sorts to follow. Otherwise impossible.
Give her to us.
"FUCK YOU!" Gina howled, and choked on tears. She looked quickly back to where the woman had been standing by the barn, almost unbalanced herself. The woman had reappeared, and now she had a companion. A young nubile blond girl in a green cap. A hand of bone absently caressing one cheek. Others like them— nominally human, but each with his own appalling disfiguration of evil— seemed to be emerging, more or less boldly, in the gloom of the woodlot.
Gina paused, unzipped her jacket, tore open her shirt to expose the little gold cross between her breasts. Then she staggered on weary legs down the incline, Hillary riding uneasily on her stooped shoulders and bent back.
"I'm going to make it going to make it going— "
Behind her, screams. It gave her an unexpected jolt of confidence, she almost laughed at their childish outpouring of pique.
Thank God she had been to confession only two nights ago. She was strong in her faith and without sin, she was not weak where they could get at her.
Only Hillary remained vulnerable.
A shadow appeared ahead of them on the snow, faint at first. She heard the whirring frenzy of small wings.
"Yea though I walk through the valley ... of the shadow of death I will . . . fear no evil. ..."
But she couldn't move quickly enough, the fuming large shadow was everywhere. Gina had a glimpse of the almost incandescent handprint on Hillary's forehead, looked past her face in dismay and amazement and saw them coming, a flickering mass of quick little birds, a dusky cloud of wings. The birds whirled in all around her, beaky and screeching, and then Hillary was gone, snatched from Gina's shoulders; they flew with her as if she were as weightless as a bit of string toward the hilltop, the barn, the cheering haunters.
All of this Gina witnessed with diminishing sharpness of mind before she staggered a final time and toppled sideways into the snow.
65
"My Lorddd! If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't be near believin' it! Hey! Don't close your eyes again. You got to get up, you'll freeze to death lyin' here like this. Wake up!"
Gina was dimly aware of being spoken to, of the impact of a firm little hand against one cold raw cheek. She flinched away from an anticipated second blow, and brought the face in front of her slowly into focus. Pretty. If her eyes hadn't been spaced a little too close together, her small white teeth too far apart, she would have been a knockout. Her face was framed by a fur-lined parka. The tip of her pert nose was red. Even with this diabolical touch she didn't look anything like Satan, or one of his kind. Her eyes were as unsullied as rainwater.
