Darkly The Thunder

by William W. Johnstone

  “Gordie, open the doors!” Sunny yelled.

  Behind them, the line of death-swollen and head-shrunken nakedness was lumbering closer, strange and inhuman sounds coming from their mouths. Those that still had heads, that is.

  Gordie jerked out his Mag and blew the cylinder lock out of the metal. He kicked the doors open.

  A naked and bloody man grabbed Jill from behind and rode her to the floor, just inside the doors. He had a huge erection. He tore at her clothing and, grunting and hunching, tried to spread her legs. Dean turned around and kicked the hideousness in the face, knocking him off of and away from Jill. Dean jerked her to her feet and shoved her in front of him, out the door.

  The line of living dead gathered at the doors, but did not attempt to follow.

  Buzzards had gathered all around the bodies sprawled in the front of the hospital and were busy dining on the rotting human flesh, tearing great chunks of meat from the dead and waddling around, some of them already so bloated they could not fly.

  Gordie emptied his Mag into the air, to frighten off the carrion birds and to clear a path for them to get to the vehicles.

  The hard and evil laughter of the Fury echoed all around them.

  The group made it to the cars and roared off, just as Jill said, “I swear to God, I think I’m going to faint for the first time in my life.”

  Then she promptly passed out.

  When she opened her eyes, she was lying on a cot in the sheriffs office, Howie standing over her, looking down at her through very serious eyes.

  She licked very dry lips. “Where am I?” she asked.

  “Hell,” the boy said.

  Book Two

  Chapter One

  The urge to kill, like the urge to beget, is blind and sinister. Its craving is set

  Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can

  Howl the same way for the flesh of a man.

  Voznesensky

  Dean and Jill and their camera crews sat numbly in the main room of the S.O. They had all been briefed as to the situation.

  All had taken it calmly enough. They had all seen enough of the power of the Fury to know that they were solely in the hands of the Fury, and solely at the mercy of its evil whims.

  Jill had changed into fresh jeans, tossing away her torn ones. With a sigh, she rose from her chair and walked over to the group of college students who were gathered around a TV set.

  Jill looked at all the old cars displayed on the screen. “A fifties movie? I don’t think I’m familiar with this one.”

  Doyle looked up at her and motioned toward a chair. Jill sat down.

  “No movie, Miss Pierce,” he said, as Dean wandered over and took a chair. “Somehow, Sand is showing us the truth of what happened, thirty years ago.”

  Jill had been raised a Catholic. But she had not been to mass or confession in years. Without thinking, she crossed herself.

  Bos and Hillary had seen the gesture. “The local priest is dead, Miss Pierce,” Bos said. “The deputies found his body this morning. He’d been stripped naked and nailed up to a wall in the church. And then mutilated,” he added with a grimace.

  “The . . . Fury?”

  Hillary shook her head. “No. The townspeople did it to him.”

  “Why?” Dean asked.

  The young people shrugged.

  “Tell me about this Sand,” Jill said.

  She was brought up to date.

  “Sand’s just had the hell beat out of him by the cops over in Monte Rio,” Lynn finished it. “Dan Thompson’s father paid them to do it.”

  “Dan Thompson?” Dean looked at the girl. “The journalist who is MIA in Southeast Asia?”

  “He’s dead, Dean,” Sunny said, walking up. “Richard Jennings told me.”

  “The . . . dead man you interviewed?”

  “Yes.”

  Dean stuffed his pipe and lit it. “The greatest news story of the century unfolding all around us, and we can’t get the film out.”

  WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T? DID YOU HEAR THAT FROM ME? NO, YOU DID NOT. AS A MATTER OF FACT, I INSIST THAT MY STORY BE TOLD IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE. GREASEBALL AND THE OLD COPPER OVER THERE ARE THE ONES WHO DON’T WANT THE PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF THIS HOG-PEN TO BE INFORMED OF MY GREATNESS.

  Neither Jill nor Dean said it aloud, but they both understood Gordie’s reasoning behind the secrecy. Now. And they agreed with the sheriff.

  BAH! the Fury faded away.

  “He’s gone,” Howie called.

  “How does he know that?” a cameraman asked.

  Sunny explained that the boy was a computer genius. She looked at Jill. The reporter seemed captivated by the events unfolding on the screen.

  “It’s being recorded, right?”

  “Yes,” Sunny told her. “Sand wants me to do his story in book form.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Richard did.” She pointed to the screen. “Richard told me that Sand was living a hundred years out of his time period. And he knew that for a fact . . . after he died. Sand was truly born out of time and place. As was Joey. Fate – and he said to believe very strongly in that – was not kind to Sand. He said that Sand could no more change, or alter what he was, than a bear or lion or wolf.”

  “My God!” Jill pointed to the screen. “Who in the world is that? Or what in the world it is?”

  Watts passed by and stopped. He laughed aloud at the familiar figure in a silk top hat. “That, folks, is Morg. Turn up the volume. My men were tailing him right after Sand was leaned on by the cops over in Monte Rio. I’ve always thought this is where they made their decision to band together and fight.”

  “I’ve missed something,” Gordie said. “Why did they have to band together at all, Al?”

  “You want to run the tape back, sir?” Bos asked Watts.

  Watts shook his head. “No. I can fill you all in. That’ll save time; since we don’t know how much time we have before Fury kills us all. Or tries. There was a young man who lived over in Monte Rio. I can’t remember his name. Anyway, he saw the writing on the wall, so to speak. He had a meeting with Sand and they agreed to cool the rumble – to use the vernacular of the nineteen fifties. They agreed to a truce. There had been several bad fights between the Pack and those rich shits over in Monte Rio. The kid from Monte Rio who had succeeded in doing what no one else had – that is, arranging a truce – was killed that same night.

  “Well, the blame was laid on Sand’s head. I personally led the investigating team, and was convinced that Sand had nothing to do with the boy’s death. About a week after the accident . . .”

  “Fury is coming!” Howie called.

  “Screw the Fury,” Watts said. “We found the guy who really killed the boy. It was a young man all popped up on bennies. But by that time, conditions had deteriorated past the point of no return. Young Dan Thompson . . .” He looked at Sunny. “. . . the friend of your friend, had discovered his father had paid to have Sand leaned on by those assholes with badges over in Monte Rio. Young Dan left home and went to live with his great aunt, one Julie von Mehren.” Watts paused, smiling, knowing he had just dropped a small bomb in the room.

  And it shook everybody up. Gordie was the first to speak. “The huge mansion up in the mountains.”

  “That’s the one. At that time, Julie was the richest woman on the face of the earth. And she was crazy about Sand. Julie died several years before you came here, Gordie. Lived to be in her late nineties.” Watts was lost in memory “She finally told me,” he continued, “that on the night I . . . killed Sand, she was awakened out of a sound sleep. She didn’t, at first, know what woke her up. She said the sky that night was so bright, so star-filled, it was almost like day. And it was. I remember how eerie it felt. She said . . . . some thing began circling around her bed. And the thunder that night, my God, it rumbled and raged. I had never heard anything like it; before or since.

  “Julie told me that on that night, she stood shivering on her balcony, and watched
the souls meet. She said something came down from the heavens to join something that the heavens rejected.”

  Everyone in the room had gathered around and was listening. “What did she mean, sir?” Sandy Dennis asked.

  When he spoke again, Watts’s voice was husky with emotion. “Robin, Tuddie, Jane, Joey. They came out of heaven to join Sand and Morg. And Julie said there was a tiny, mist-like object that followed the larger bursts downward. I think that was Sand’s son, following his mother.”

  Sunny glanced up. “I wasn’t aware that Sand and Robin had a son.”

  Robin Jennings said, “Yes. My aunt was eight-months pregnant when those crapheads from over Monte Rio kicked her to death. The baby died. That’s when Uncle Sand snapped.”

  Watts rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “Yes, that is what happened. That was one bloody awful night. For all concerned.”

  OH, WHAT ROT AND DRIVEL. HOW NAUSEATING. IT MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE.

  “What do you want?” Gordie asked.

  I HAVE RETURNED TO RESUME THE RELATING OF MY GLORIOUS LIFE, CACTUS-HEAD.

  Sunny rose and walked toward the office.

  The others turned their attention to the TV.

  The screen showed Sand sitting on the edge of a steel bunk. He was dripping wet with water from a high pressure hose. He was looking at a half-dozen cops. These cops hired and paid by the rich folks of Monte Rio, to keep the non-rich out. Sand knew he was in the basement of the Monte Rio jail. He’d heard horror stories about this place.

  Sand knew he was about to get the shit beat out of him. No doubt about it.

  “Am I entitled to a phone call?” he asked.

  The cops thought that was very funny. Sand didn’t see the humor in it.

  “Who do you wanna call, punk?”

  Someday, Sand silently vowed – and those watching from the future could read his thoughts – I will change your looks, bastard. “My girl – so she won’t worry.”

  Sand looked down at his bare feet. No boots, no belt.

  Never give a sucker an even break.

  “She won’t have to worry long, punk,” a cop told him. “Just ’til your funeral. Then she can find someone else to fuck.”

  Sand came off the bunk and hit the cop, driving him back against a wall.

  Then the other cops were all over him.

  Those watching the events of thirty years past could actually smell the dew-covered grass as it filled Sand’s head. Sand tried to open his eyes. He could not. For one panic-filled moment, he thought he was blind. Then he discovered his eyelids were caked shut with dried blood. He could not make his hands understand that they should rise up to his face and clear his vision. Finally, the bruised muscles in his arms responded, and his fingers dug away the hardened blood.

  His vision cleared, faded, then sharpened as his eyes began adjusting. He coughed, and pain exploded all over his body.

  His boots were on his feet and his belt was threaded through the loops. Nice and neat, he thought. No boots or belt would have been a dead give away.

  Using brute strength, he pulled himself out of a ditch, coming to his car. The Mercury was nosed into a gully, the front fenders and hood crunched, the radiator still steaming, the windshield knocked out.

  “I had a wreck,” Sand muttered through swollen and smashed lips. “And I was killed. Almost nice and neat, boys. But you left some loose ends.”

  He crawled on, rage making him strong, forcing him on. “But you should have made sure I was dead, boys. You should have made sure. There will be a payback for this. That’s a promise.”

  Watts walked to the TV and turned the volume down. His face was ugly and hard with anger. “I knew that’s what happened! I knew it. I tried to get Sand to let me take care of it. He never would admit the cops leaned on him.”

  “Would the cops who did that have been beaten as bad as Sand was beaten?” Howie asked.

  “The law doesn’t work that way, Howie,” Watts told him. “And you know it.”

  “It should,” Angel said.

  The brother and sister walked back into the computer room.

  “I know from reading old reports, that the cops who beat Sand were badly beaten themselves later on,” Gordie said. “And no one was ever caught or charged for it. Sand?”

  “Sure,” Watts told them all, fitting another piece of the old puzzle together. “But I never could catch Sand. Julie’s money put up quite a wall, believe me it did. That woman just flat-out told me, that if I wanted to remain with the state patrol, I better not ever charge Sand for doing what the courts wouldn’t do. She told me that if I thought a billion dollars couldn’t buy a lot of grief, just try her and see.”

  Gordie chuckled. “I just can’t imagine you backing down from anything, Al.”

  “I didn’t back down from a damn thing! I just couldn’t pin it on him. Every time one of those jackleg cops would get hammered on – and brother, they got hammered on – Sand would have an alibi no DA would even dream of disputing. Carl Lee, Robin’s father, one of the most respected men in this community, and he would always step up and say Sand had been with him.”

  “Carl Lee. CL Enterprises?” Gordie questioned.

  “That’s him. He owned a large chunk of this town, not to mention about a third of the county. A good, decent, honorable man, and my best friend. But Carl saw himself in Sand. He knew Sand was getting the raw end of law enforcement and stood by him. Right up to and including the end.”

  “Did Sand whip the cops that bad?” Paul asked.

  “Oh, boy, did he! He whipped them all with a tire iron. He gave them double and triple what they’d dished out to him. Three of them were crippled so badly they could never work again.”

  “They got what was coming to them,” Hillary said.

  “Yes,” Watts said. “That’s what makes a good cop’s job so difficult. I know they did.” He turned and walked out of the room.

  “Three hours of listening to that pompous windbag is three hours and fifteen minutes too long,” Sunny said, when the session was over.

  “Where are you now?” Gordie asked, pouring her a cup of coffee.

  “About ten thousand B.C.,” she said, disgust in her voice. “But I shouldn’t complain. It’s buying us more time, isn’t it?”

  “Howie, are we clear?” Gordie called.

  “Yes, sir. Fury is nowhere around us.”

  Gordie sat down, after looking at and receiving a nod from Maj. Jackson. “Gather around, people. I’ve got to level with you all.”

  The crowded room fell silent.

  “Major Jackson has informed, ah, certain parties in government as to our dilemma. And those people have agreed with . . . Sand and Joey’s suggestion about how we might stop the Fury.”

  “We’re still clear, Sheriff,” Howie called. “I’ll let you know when or if the Fury approaches.”

  “Good boy. Now, people, I don’t know why we have been spared; why that . . . thing has not or cannot take control of us the way it’s managed to do the majority of the people in this town. I think that right now, that’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point, Sheriff?” Jill asked.

  “How to keep the Fury contained, and how to destroy it.”

  “And the answer to that is . . . ?” Dean questioned.

  Gordie told them.

  Those he had not already taken into his confidence sat with shocked and unbelieving looks on their faces. Stunned. Dr. Anderson could practically feel the blood pressure going up in the room.

  Lee Evans was the first to break the spell of gloom and impending doom. “Thirty or so of us as compared to millions is a small price to pay, I suppose. I don’t have to like it, but I can see why it has to be.”

  A couple of the college girls began to cry. Angel leaned against the wall, close to her brother in the computer room, and said nothing. She really wasn’t sure exactly what dying meant. Except you weren’t around anymore.

  “What are the odds of us getting out?” Dr. An
derson asked. “Or at least some of us making it?”

  Gordie looked at Maj. Jackson.

  Jackson stood up. “Some of us will probably make it out. The people who project casualties are saying less than half will make it. That’s with the information we have so far been able to feed them.”

  “You mean, there is some hope that more might make it out of here?” Bos asked, a hopeful look on his face. “Sure. The more we find out about Fury’s weak spots-if it has any, and everything does – the better our chances of making it out.”

  “May I say something?” Howie asked. He stood in the door to the tiny, cluttered room that housed his computers, keeping an eye on the screens.

  “Of course, Howie.”

  “Sunny has to keep the Fury talking; keep it occupied.

  But I would like for her to do that away from this office. With it occupied, away from here, in another part of town, we can get a lot of messages out of here. The longer she – and preferably Miss Pierce and Mr. Hildreth with her, for the Fury has a tremendous ego – can keep it talking, the better our chances of finding a weak spot in its defenses.”

  Dean looked at Jill. She shrugged. “Let’s go for it,” she said.

  “Watch it!” Howie called. “Here it comes.”

  The Fury came with such a rush, all could feel its presence as it entered the room.

  PLOTTING AGAINST ME, EH? WELL, I EXPECTED THAT. I’D BE DISAPPOINTED IF YOU DIDN’T.

  “Did you expect us to just sit here calmly and wait for death?” Watts asked. He, like the others, did not know how much the Fury knew of their plans.

  OH, NO. OF COURSE NOT. BUT NONE OF YOU HAVE DONE ANY THING. IT APPEARS TO ME THAT YOU’RE ALL JUST SITTING AROUND WITH ONE FINGER UP YOUR ASS AND ANOTHER FINGER IN YOUR MOUTH, WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO TELL YOU TO SWITCH. COME ON, THIS IS A GAME. PLAY THE GAME. TRY TO BEST ME. I CHALLENGE YOU ALL.

  The Fury left them.

  “It’s gone,” Howie called.

  “Let’s do it then,” Angel said.

  “Do what, girl?” Watts asked.