Darkly The Thunder

by William W. Johnstone

  Larry returned after speaking with the trooper in charge at the barricades. “Some prisoners tried to break out of the jail, sir,” he lied with a straight face. “They didn’t make it.”

  “Thank you, Larry,” Martin said. “There will be another briefing at eight o’clock in the morning, people,” he told the members of the press. “I’ll see you then.”

  “This is all a bunch of shit,” one reporter said to a small group of his peers. “First, there is some story about a mass murderer on the loose. Then all of a sudden we get this bubonic plague crap. And I was told by a waitress up the road that this all has something to do with a man called Sand.”

  “Sand?”

  “Yeah. Some outlaw rebel that was killed by a Colorado state trooper some thirty years ago. Man by the name of Alvin Watts.”

  “Where do we find this Watts person?”

  The reporter pointed toward Willowdale. “In there. And no way to get to him.”

  “I’m with you,” another reporter said. “I’m not buying any of the crap the government is handing out.”

  “I got an idea,” yet another reporter said.

  They all looked at him.

  “Let’s find a way to get into the town.”

  Gordie and those with him fought their way through a line of bloated and stinking walking dead and made it back to their vehicles. Several of the newly risen climbed onto the bed of the trucks and hammered on the top of the cabs, grunting and howling and cursing.

  One crawled onto the top of the cab, a brick in his hand, and smashed the windshield, sending shards of glass into the driver’s face. The poor man spun the wheel, fighting it, trying to see through the blood pouring into his eyes from numerous cuts on his scalp and forehead.

  Gordie thought the truck was right behind him. But the truckload of bodies, dead and still and dead and risen, had headed the other way after the windshield was smashed – straight toward the barricades.

  The walking dead leaned over and threw himself into the cab, smashing the brick into the deputy’s face, knocking him unconscious.

  With an insane grin on his rotted and bloated face, the dead shoved the deputy out of the way and got behind the wheel. He dropped the truck into gear and headed for the barricades.

  HEE HEE HEE HEE, the Fury giggled, spreading the distance its voice would carry.

  “What the hell was that?” a reporter asked.

  “I don’t know. But it came from the town.”

  Martin and Larry had heard the giggling from inside their mobile home and had stepped out.

  The truck, swerving from side to side in the wide street, lurched toward the barricades. The reporters noticed the erratically driven vehicle and began gathering near the barricades, as did the preachers and the government personnel. Cameras were recording it all.

  The truck stopped about a foot from the barricades, the dead driver grinning at the crowd through the broken windshield. He picked his nose, pulled out a maggot, and flipped it toward the crowd.

  “Jesus!” a reporter said. “That’s a maggot!”

  The deputy managed to open the passenger-side door and fall out onto the concrete, blood pouring from head wounds.

  The reporters and camera crews tried to push past the troopers. The troopers shoved them back, none too gently.

  OH, LET THEM COME IN, BY ALL MEANS.

  “Who said that?” a woman yelled. “Where is that voice coming from?”

  DO BOP DE DO BOP DE DO BOP, DE DO.

  “All pretense is thrown to the wind,” Larry muttered.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Martin agreed. “Back up, Larry.” There was urgency in the man’s voice. “Run, boy, run.

  They ran.

  Gordie squealed to a stop, the tires on his vehicle smoking from the sudden stop. He jumped out. “Get back!” he screamed. “All of you get back. Run, goddamnit, run!”

  Most ran, including the troopers. A few reporters and camerapersons stayed. But not for long. The barricades remained intact. The vehicles parked close to it were not harmed.

  The people standing on the outside of the barricades, close to the barriers, disappeared.

  Screaming leaped out of the air, followed by a heavy crunching sound. A bent and useless minicam popped out of the air, falling to the roadway. Tape recorders and watches and belt buckles and lipstick tubes dropped to the concrete.

  A large belch sprang out of the air.

  OH, MY, the Fury said. NOW THIS IS INTERESTING. I’M STORING SOME DATA TOTALLY NEW TO ME. I MUST TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I HAVE GATHERED. BYE, NOW.

  Gordie had returned to his unit and radioed in. He had walked back to the barricades, a bullhorn in his hand. He lifted the bullhorn and triggered it. “You goddamned sons of bitches. You greedy, sorry, motherfuckers have condemned us. I asked you to leave. I pleaded with you. Now I’m going to do what I should have done from the first.”

  He looked around as two S.O. units drove up. Deputies got out, scoped high-powered rifles in their hands. The rifles were 7mm Magnums.

  “I will shoot anyone who gets within five hundred yards of any barricade,” Gordie spoke through the bullhorn. “And my orders are to shoot to kill.”

  One reporter tested Gordie’s orders. His body lay still under the warm spring sunlight. When asked if the body could be retrieved, the reply was a terse, “No.”

  Governor Siatos had finally broke his silence. He issued an apology for the death of the reporter and ordered his state patrol out of the area immediately. President Marshall ordered a full company of Army Rangers to be flown in from Fort Lewis, Washington. The Rangers were in place by nightfall.

  Gordie talked over the barricades, now moved back another half-mile from the town, with the CO of the Rangers.

  “Do my deputies have to remain at all checkpoints, Captain?”

  “No, sir,” the Ranger told him. “We are under orders from the president of the United States to shoot to kill anyone who attempts to compromise our perimeters.”

  “You have someone in constant touch with Howie?”

  “Yes, sir. We have established both a voice and computer link with the boy.”

  “Good luck to you and your men, Captain.”

  “Good luck to you and your people, sir. I don’t envy you your position.”

  Gordie tried a smile that almost made it. “We’ve lasted this long. Maybe we can pull this thing off.”

  “Captain,” a man called. “The boy says the Fury is resting. The thing is all tapped out from the recent extending of its territory.”

  “What exactly does that mean, Sheriff?”

  “It means we can talk freely without the Fury suddenly popping up to listen without our knowing.”

  “My briefing was pretty sketchy, sir. What is this thing you’re facing? And I have a top secret clearance, sir.”

  Martin Tobias had walked up, and walked up very softly. “You may tell the captain, Sheriff. After the incident with those . . . dead people this afternoon, and the gobbling up of half a dozen reporters, we’re worldwide news. And before you brief the captain and myself,” he smiled, “how is Megan?”

  “She’s fine, Mr. Tobias. Like the rest of us, coping.”

  “Continue with the briefing, Sheriff.”

  “The Fury is a collapsed, neutron star that somehow – we don’t know how and probably never will – managed to evolve to become a thinking mass. But one that is nearly totally evil.”

  “I don’t understand the nearly totally evil bit,” the Ranger Captain said.

  “No thinking being is totally evil for very long, Captain,” Martin told him. “Not even mankind. It would destroy itself. All things have to have some, well, call it compassion, love, weakness. What does it want, Sheriff?”

  “Its wonderful, magnificent life story told,” Gordie said sarcastically.

  Martin removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with a very white handkerchief. “Keep it talking,” he finally said. “It will probably kill you all when it’s
finished.”

  “Yes,” Gordie agreed. “Mr. Tobias, now that the press knows, well, that something more than bubonic plague is here, I have a request, since I am still the sheriff of this county.”

  “Name it.”

  “Evacuate everybody for twenty miles around.”

  “We’ve already evacuated for five miles. Do you think that is wise?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m trying to keep you people alive in there, Sheriff. Let’s don’t make the Fury so angry that he, it, will kill you all in a rage.”

  “All right. I see your point. But each time it advances a half-mile, you people back up five.”

  “Done.”

  “We’re going to need more people in here,” the Ranger captain said. “It’s one thing sealing off a town, another sealing off fifty or sixty square miles in all directions.”

  Martin slowly nodded his agreement. “I have a full contingent of the 82nd Airborne standing by.”

  “Get them up here, sir.”

  “Done.” He looked at Gordie in the moonlight. “Sheriff, I have a bomber standing by, ready to be armed with what you requested.”

  “Then our scientists have agreed with Sand’s theory on destroying the Fury?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately. But we’ve got to get you people out of there.”

  “Howie and Angel. Maybe a few of the younger kids. Robin Jennings and Ricky what’s-his-name, her boyfriend. The college kids if we can. The rest of us?” He shrugged. “If we have to go up with the Fury, that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Do you understand what is going to happen with a neutron bomb, Sheriff?”

  “No.”

  “It will detonate at ground level. One huge mass of energy meeting another huge mass of energy. A much larger mass of energy, I might add. There will be tremendous firestorms, possibly the most savage lightning ever experienced here on earth – at least since man became more or less civilized. In all probability, there will be nothing left for several miles in any direction. One very large hole in the ground near the center of the explosion.”

  “Will this area be radioactive?”

  “Our scientists don’t know. It’s doubtful, but that is the best they can do without further knowledge of the Fury’s makeup.”

  “Have you leveled with the press?”

  “Not yet. Tomorrow morning, the president is going to speak on a worldwide hookup.”

  The Ranger Captain grunted.

  “What’s the matter, Captain?” Martin asked.

  “That’s when the shit hitting the fan turns into a cluster-fuck, sir.”

  Both Gordie and Martin laughed at the young captain’s bluntness.

  “I couldn’t have said it better, son,” Martin said, patting him on the arm.

  Chapter Seven

  When Gordie returned to the office, most of the people were gathered around the TV in the main room. The new additions, including Gordie’s wife, had been housed in an old unused cell block in the basement.

  “I don’t trust any of them,” Mack said. “Not a damn one of them.”

  “I see someone put a deputy next to their door.”

  “Lee.”

  “Good move. What’s with the television?”

  “Sand has really been throwing it at us fast. It’s both fascinating and depressing. He really got screwed by the law, Gordie. Makes me ashamed. I’m surprised he held on to his sanity as long as he did.”

  “Jesus God, I remember this scene,” Watts was saying, as they walked up to the TV.

  “Bring me up-to-date,” Gordie said.

  “About a year before the bottom dropped out for Sand and his bunch, every time I’d get around Sand or Joey, I’d feel some sort of, well, strange sensation. It was like a, well, pressure, very slight, on me. Now I know what it was.”

  “This Force Sand and Richard spoke of?”

  “Yes. I was lecturing Sand here, Gordie.” Watts pointed to the screen. “Trying to get him to see he was screwing up his life. I thought my mind was beginning to play tricks on me. Now I know it wasn’t. It was real.”

  They looked at the screen.

  “Goddamnit, Sand!” Watts roared. “Sit your ass down in that chair and listen to me.”

  Sand sat and glared at the trooper.

  “I just came from Julie von Mehren’s mansion up in the mountains. She likes you, boy. Why, I don’t know. But she does. She’s heard, as I have heard, that all hell is about to break loose between you and those rich snots over in Monte Rio, and that one frat house that’s aligned with them.”

  “Captain, I swear to you, this is news to me.”

  “Sand, I believe you. My own sources tell me that crap that Bill Marlson is spreading about you is all lies. But tempers are running hot and heavy. Back off, Sand.”

  “Captain, where do I back off to? I have no backing room left me.”

  “You could break up the Pack.”

  “Why should I? Name me one illegal act that any of us have ever done? Point out one time that any of us ever set out to start a fight. All we do is work and drive custom cars. Since when is that against the law?”

  “Public support is most definitely not with you people.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “If you continue this fight with those rich snots at Monte Rio, and with this one fraternity house – even if you people don’t start a single fight – public opinion is going to harden against you. Sand, you can be anything you want to be. You’re big, tough, handsome, fast on your feet, a born leader, and you’re a genius – just like Joey. But all those fine qualities have been wasted on you. God, I wish you had been born a hundred years ago. You’d have been a gunfighter. I’d be reading books about you.”

  “I wish the same, Captain.”

  “I know you do. But you can’t go back in time, son. You’ve got to conform; you’ve got to, Sand.”

  Sand blurred in his eyes; the young man seemed to be wearing buckskins, his hair shoulderlength. The wall behind him changed into a saloon scene from the Old West. Watts shook his head. The vision seemed to clear, blurred again. Watts blinked his eyes. Sand wore a pirate’s outfit, the wall behind him became the sea, and the air was thick with smoke from a battle at sea.

  Thunder cracked in Watts’s head. He could not keep his eyes open.

  When he finally forced his eyes open, Sand was wearing a breastplate and he was mounted on a horse. A castle loomed in the background. Watts gripped the arms of his chair and fought the images.

  “What the hell!” he whispered.

  “Is something the matter?” Sand asked.

  Watts’s vision cleared. Sand was looking at him curiously.

  Watts looked out his office window. The day was clear. “Did you hear thunder just then?”

  “Thunder? No, sir.”

  “I’ve been working too hard. You’re driving me nuts, Sand. I don’t know what motivates you. I don’t understand you. I don’t know whether to offer you a job with the state patrol, or to petition to have you placed in a crazy house. And me along with you. Get out of here, Sand. I have work to do. And Sand? Stay out of trouble.”

  The picture on the TV set faded.

  “What happened after that, Colonel?” Megan asked.

  “The next week those crap-heads over at Monte Rio ambushed a Pack member. His name was Norris. His girlfriend, Gloria, was with him. Norris was badly beaten, and Gloria was raped – repeatedly. They continued to rape her even after they had beaten her into unconsciousness. A deputy sheriff who was patrolling the back roads found her crawling along the side of the road, naked, babbling in hysteria, blood dripping from her mouth, nose, and ears. She was brain-damaged. She was finally placed in an asylum. She’s still there. Norris regained consciousness only once, long enough to tell a doctor who had done him in. The DA rejected the deathbed statement. Norris died, Gloria sat in her padded room and rocked her dolly, the punks who raped her and killed Norris walked free, and the war was on.<
br />
  Sunny said, “Sand and his friends seemed to get the shaft everytime they turned around.”

  “Yes, they did,” Watts said with a heavy sigh.

  They all turned and walked toward the computer room at the sounds of Howie typing. He had typed: Sand? Were you all those people that Mr. Watts saw that day in his – office?

  Yes, the reply quickly came.

  Reincarnation?

  Yes. The soul does not die, Howie. It lives forever. If one is strong enough, and persistent enough, they can find the door.

  Watts said, “Tell him that the government is ready with a bomber.”

  Sand replied: That was a good idea the sheriff had about the fire and smoke. It might work. Keep it in mind.

  Gordie grunted. “Ask him about my wife and the others who came in today. Can they be trusted?”

  I cannot interfere in that. I have been warned.

  The screen went dark.

  “How would you read that reply, Howie?” Watts asked.

  “That they can’t be trusted,” the boy replied.

  “Look out!” Mack screamed the warning, just as the door to the basement burst open and a butcher knife was driven into the back of the deputy guarding the door.

  Mack jerked his old .357 from leather and shot the knife-wielding man between the eyes. The bullet went all the way through the head and wanged off the steel door frame.

  The man dropped to the floor, then opened his eyes and grinned at Mack, while slowly getting to his feet. Mack emptied his .357 into the man’s chest, the slugs knocking him back. He would not die. But his weight was preventing the others in the basement from pushing open the door and flooding into the room. All on the ground level could hear them cursing and howling to be freed.

  “Is there another way out of the basement?” Jill asked, as men moved furniture moved against the door, temporarily blocking any escape.

  “One door. But it’s steel, just like that door,” Gordie said. “They’ll not get out that way. Lee, get that welder’s set from the evidence room. I know something about welding. We’ll seal them off.”