~
Tammy Dobbs parked her bright yellow Jeep YJ in her twin sister’s driveway. She was thankful for small favors. That abusive son-of-a-bitch brother-in-law of hers was in Bozeman until tomorrow. There was no better chance for her and Sherry to get the fuck out of Dodge.
She just had to keep it together. She had always been the rebel, the daring one, the one who took that skinny-dip in front of the Collado boys, the one who blew Mr. Patasky just to get a D in English. But she wondered where that daring rebel was now. The truth was, she was scared out of her mind.
There was that crazy stampede at the park. All that killing at the community center. That mess with Bobby Duncan at the Conoco. Artie Fisher. Sonia Wheaton. Tom Greenwood. All she really knew was that Torch Falls wasn’t turning into a ghost town—it had been that all her life—it was turning into a graveyard.
The Thrifty Mart had been packed. Well, with people, anyway. By the time she got there to pick up a few things for the trip—a one-way, that much she knew—a few things were all that were left. People were pushing and shoving, getting all up in each other’s faces. Ina Krantz looked like she needed about two weeks off. Despite her urgency, she had offered Ina a ride home, had said she would wait until she finished her shift—it was only fifteen minutes—but Ina had thanked her and told her to go.
Racing over, rolling through every stop, she had seen much more than this brewing thunderstorm. Tommy Lalonde stood on his front lawn holding a rifle, and while she hadn’t gotten a good look at him, she would have sworn that his face had been all fucked up around his eyes. Over on Fir, not one, not two, but three houses were in flames; she’d seen a small boy with a gas can bolting for the home on the corner. On Maple, she’d passed four dogs ripping each other apart.
She got out. The street was eerily quiet, and she started when the thunder came. Smoke rose above the burning houses several streets over, and she heard the whine of a siren in the distance.
Her sister didn’t answer the bell, not on the first ring, nor the second nor third. Panic gripped her, and she pounded on the door. Only when she heard Coming! from beyond it did her heart begin to settle.
“Sorry, sis,” Sherry said, inviting her in. “I was upstairs.” The black eye looked better.
“Are you packed?”
Sherry didn’t answer. She looked anxious.
“Look,” Tammy said. “You agreed. No turning back.”
“He’ll come after me, Tam. You know he will.”
“He’s not going to find us. By noon tomorrow, we’ll be a million miles from here. He doesn’t know where we’re going.”
“What about Ernie? We can’t just leave him behind.”
“For crying out loud, he’s forty-two. And he’s an idiot.”
“Did you call him?”
“Of course I did. Called him at the dump this morning. When I asked him to come with us, he told me I was crazy. That this’ll all blow over.”
“Maybe it will! Did you ever think that?”
“Are you two just thick? Do you want to wait around for someone to slit your damn throat?”
“Stop it!” Sherry said. “Don’t say stuff like that.”
“Are you coming or not?”
Sherry threw up her hands. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got a job here.”
Tammy found some of that rebel; some resolve, at least. “Really? You’re playing that card? You wanna stay here and be Curt’s punching bag until he kills you?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Then stop being such a chicken shit. Stand up for yourself. Take your goddamn life back.”
“It’s easy for you,” Sherry said. “It always was.”
Tammy grabbed her by the arm and gave her a shake. “Do you hear that?”
“What? Thunder?”
“Listen,” Tammy snapped. The siren grew louder.
“I’m scared, Tam. Even if we leave, Curt—”
“Fuck Curt! Fuck Ernie! Damn it! You need to wake the hell up, girl. This town is about to explode. We have to get the hell out of here.”
Sherry considered. She nodded weakly, her frightened eyes so telling.
“Go,” Tammy said, directing her upstairs. “Pack quick.”
“I already did. I just have a couple of things to put in my bag. Gimme two minutes.”
“I love you, Sherr. It’s gonna be all right.”
“I love you, too.”
Sherry rushed upstairs. She came down a few minutes later with a suitcase in one hand, her purse in the other. She dropped both. “Tam?”
Tammy was already dead. Not dead dead, no, but she knew that she was. Knew it the instant she felt that fiery throb in her eyes and heard that word in her head; the instant she went to the kitchen and drew the carving knife from the drawer. She was the rebel, after all.
Tammy Dobbs brought the blade to her throat … and Sherry Dobbs screamed.
~
Wan Li did not believe in ghosts. He did not believe those tall tales his long-dead father used to tell, did not believe in those horrible things like Shui Gui or Jiangshi. But what he did believe was this: Something had come to Torch Falls, something evil, something not of this earth.
He locked the front door to Hung Fat and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. He was usually open until two in the morning, but not tonight. In fact, he was never flipping that sign again. He didn’t know what was going on in this perfect little town he’d called home for fifteen years, but he’d had enough.
He shut the window blinds and turned off the lights. Panic gripped him. He hurried past the counter and into the kitchen, washed up quickly, and hung up his apron. After grabbing his suitcase from his upstairs apartment, he emptied the till and the safe, and grabbed his car keys.
He cracked open the back door and peered into the alley. He saw no one. Deep thunder rose above a siren in the distance.
He stepped outside and locked the door. A brisk wind blew the lid off one of his trash cans, scaring him half to death. He picked it up and covered the container. More thunder sent him moving again. He stepped briskly down the alley and into the parking lot behind the theater. A few drops of rain fell.
He tossed his suitcase into the back of his Ford Fiesta and got in behind the wheel. His brother had always told him that if things didn’t work out in the restaurant business, he was welcome to move in with him. Han worked for Microsoft in Redmond—an all-night drive—and that’s exactly where he was going.
He lit up a Winston Gold and started the car. Backing out, he had to throw the shifter into park, and the car rocked. He groaned. His eyes burned. He checked them in his mirror, and reeled at the thick creeping veins around them. Then the pain left him.
He felt dizzy. He didn’t know what that word was in his head, but it wasn’t English. And it wasn’t Mandarin.
No. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear on his father’s grave it was the voice of a ghost.
Wan trembled. His pulse quickened as he drew the Winston from his lips and brought the glowing tip to his eye.
“Quemar.”
~
Jack Henneman Jr. was born and bred on a hilly, lushly treed 22-acre ranch in southern Montana. His father, Jack Henneman Sr., was born on the same farm, in the same eight-by-eight room, in the same bone-chilling month of the new year, just as his father was. In fact, it was a running joke in the Henneman family that the men planted their seed in the spring to reap a January harvest. Jack Jr. had two children, both girls, both grown and moved on. He had no missus. His Audrey had passed these lonely eight years, struck down at fifty-three by a wicked bout of pneumonia.
As he drove back from town, he kept an eye on that blackening sky. A storm was coming, to be sure. But he feared a much bigger one was on the horizon. Like the monster that took his Audrey, whatever was stalking these parts had infected the Falls with its own brand of poison. Its own brand of hurt.
He’d seen ring worm and rain rot, colic and bots. This thing was like all of th
em and more, just about every nasty virus and critter all rolled into one. A parasite bigger than the gut it thrived in. One monstrous pneumonia.
And a monster was what it was. It had a thirst for the mind and a hunger for the heart. He’d heard the reports on the radio. Heard the whispers. At first he’d dismissed it as horse shit, like most of the two-bit gossip around here. Hell, he’d even considered the Phantom, or at least some other crazy. But the way it was going down now, people—good, decent folk coming apart at the seams—it seemed that that writer fella turned out to be right after all.
There was a story here.
Lightning broke through the gray as he turned into his quarter-mile driveway. He made his way up and parked. When he got out, nearby thunder made him look up. The winds picked up as a misty sheet of rain swept across the hills. They headed straight for him.
He opened the lid to the cargo box in the back of the truck. Inside were four bags of groceries and supplies. He’d stocked up, just like all those other folks he’d seen at the Thrifty Mart and the hardware store. He’d never seen such worry. Such fear. If someone had said boo, there would have been a stampede. Fact was, he would have been leading the charge.
He was relieved to be home. He didn’t know if whatever was loose out there was something in the water or in the air, but whatever it was, if it was catchable, he didn’t want to catch it. This was one infection he knew would be terminal. He had enough supplies to last a couple of weeks, maybe three if he stretched them, and he prayed that by then, the world would go back to spinning the way it used to.
And if it didn’t?
He didn’t know. Maybe this was the end that all those holy rollers would have him believe. Maybe it was.
He put away his supplies and hurried outside again. From the back of the pickup he grabbed his freshly filled jerry can and set it inside the tool shed beside the house. Rain started to fall, and he herded the horses into the stable. One by one he led them into the stalls. On his way out, he stopped at the stall nearest the stable doors.
“Hi ya, Chief.” He stroked the golden palomino’s light-cream mane. The horse neighed softly, his big champagne eyes as anxious as ever. Chief didn’t like storms.
Jack eyed the stalls. Nine horses left. Chief trembled when the thunder came.
“Easy, boy,” he said. “Ol’ Jack’s here.”
He stepped outside. The rain was coming hard. Wind slapped his face. He bolted the stable doors and hustled to the house.
He started a pot of coffee. As he fixed himself some soup and salad for dinner, he thought about Audrey, about his girls. About Chief.
And then he thought about the burning in his eyes, thought about that gibberish stuck in his brain. It was still stuck when he found himself outside in the pouring rain, pouring gasoline from the jerry can all around the stable.
~
Miles Bailey turned onto Old Mill Sideroad and headed east in his Honda CR-V. He glanced up in the rear-view mirror, and worried eyes met worried eyes.
Sitting in back, Claire Bailey didn’t speak. Instead, she turned to their newborn baby girl.
“It’ll be okay,” Miles said. He didn’t believe that, of course. He knew his wife of nine years didn’t, either. After three miscarriages, Claire hadn’t believed much in miracles—until six weeks ago.
“It’ll be okay,” he repeated, as if to convince himself. He turned on the radio, hoping to hear some calming music. When the news came on, he switched it off. No news was good news. Right?
He didn’t believe that, either. He was there when that cop opened fire into the crowd. He’d almost lost both his girls. That had been bad enough, but what he saw twenty minutes ago had been it.
Who the fuck eats their own fingers?
Cooper Hudson, that’s who. Bit off his right pinky, right there on his next-door stoop. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes—if the man hadn’t actually fucking done that right there in front of him, chewing that finger like it was a goddamn Slim Jim, he wouldn’t have screamed like a goddamn school girl. He’d screamed so loud that Claire had come out of the house with Alyssa in her arms, only to start screaming herself.
His 9mm Glock sat in the glove compartment. He didn’t know if he’d need it, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The world—well, the world of Torch Falls, at least—was all fucked up. People were fucked up. He’d be damned if he was going to sit by and just wait for the zombie apocalypse. No one—no one—was eating his child.
“Hurry,” Claire said.
“Let’s keep our heads, all right? The last thing we want is to get pulled over.”
“I just want to get the hell out of here.”
He sped up a little, but kept their speed to just over the limit. The sky lit up with lightning. Booming thunder followed, and his baby girl started to cry. Claire rocked her in her car seat, and she quieted.
The railroad crossing was up ahead—the one he saw some dumbass in a red Toyota hatchback just beat the train across six or seven years ago—and he slowed when he heard the lasting blast of a horn. Across the sprawling fields he saw a long freight train rolling down the tracks, and for a moment, thought he might try to beat it.
“Can we make it?” Claire said.
They probably could; of course they could. But Miles applied the brakes instead, easing the CR-V to a smooth stop. The train was still in the distance, but the red warning lights at the crossing were flashing.
“We can make it,” Claire urged.
Miles heard the panic in her voice. “I … I don’t think that’s a good idea, Claire.”
And it wasn’t. But what was, was that word that shot into his brain. The word that came right after what felt like a hot-iron poker had rammed through his eyes. The pain was gone, but he could still feel this odd prickling under his skin. Like insects crawling inside his face.
Miles mumbled something, gibberish, really, then inched the CR-V ahead and stopped on the tracks. He locked out the power windows and locks. When he looked up in the rear-view, worried eyes met worried eyes.
“Miles! Miles!”
Claire unbuckled her seat belt and struggled for the one that secured her little miracle. It would take one, Miles knew, for them to survive.
The train horn blared. Much louder now.
“Miles! Miles, please! Miiiilllles!”
Claire Bailey got her daughter free and scooped her out of the car seat. She closed her eyes. She held onto her miracle, and prayed for another.
~
Saul Friedman took a long walkabout inside the aging Strand Theater. Despite the growing thunder beyond the walls, it was quiet here. Calming. As the current owner, he had been married to the old girl for thirty-seven years—two years longer than his lost love, Atarah. The first movie he saw here was Casablanca. The last was Commando, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’d stopped watching after that.
Out on the sidewalk, he glanced across the hard lines in her tired face. She used to smile. Now she wore steel braces of rusted scaffolding. They were ugly. It was all so ugly.
He shut her shiny new doors. Shut them for what he knew was the last time. He wasn’t deeply religious, but he feared. He feared.
With masking tape he put up the note he had scribbled. A sharp wind threatened to blow it away, and he secured it all along its edges. It might not last through the storm, but what did it matter.
He looked up into the sky as thunder boomed. When he turned toward the water tower, something caught his eye. He couldn’t be certain—it was so far away—but he thought he saw someone fall from the top.
He turned back to the note. If he remembered his Sunday school, it was from Yochanan. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to write it; he supposed it was obvious to anyone who might see it. Perhaps he wrote it just for himself. Perhaps it was his way of saying goodbye to his grand old girl.
Children, this is the Last Hour.
He had none of his own. Atarah had been barren. But in some way he had always felt that the patrons that h
ad come through these doors were his family. And in some way, he hoped, perhaps they felt the same.
He looked into the street. His heart sank. Kyle Duncan had been a decent young man. Almost like a son.
Lightning streaked across the sky. The warm wind felt cold on his face. He shivered … and walked away.
~ 189
“I know you think it’s crazy,” Jared said, as he and Marisa approached a four-way stop. “But I know that Rose can help us.”
“A dead woman. This is all you’ve got? Our son is out there, God knows where, and—”
“Have you got a better idea?”
“Yes! We need to hit every street we can.”
“Trust me.”
Marisa shook her head and hurried through the intersection. “You better be right about this.”
A crack of lightning snaked across the dark sky. “It was Horn,” Jared said. “Things he said about Rose.”
“Like what?”
“Like this storm, for one. She told him that I had to put my faith in God. That I would weather the storm.”
“Coincidence,” Marisa said doubtfully. “It could be.”
“Mar … she knew about the shape.”
“What?”
“Rose knows things,” he said, hoping to convince her. “I mean, she knew things. Things about me she had no way of knowing.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Look, I’m the last guy to buy into it. But the first time I met her was more than a little creepy. She knew I had a brother. Knew Judd and I were having problems. Hell, Mar, she even knew my favorite cookies.”
“Oatmeal raisin. She said that?”
“She did. She even gave me some.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. At my little celebration in the park, she came up to me. I gave her a signed copy of Insanity, and just as she was about to head off, she gave me a real case of the willies. She didn’t say a word, but she had this look in her eye. Worry. Worry about me. It was like she knew something bad was going to happen, but didn’t want to tell me. And then look what happened. And the things she told Horn …”
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