In the sudden darkness she heard the back door open.
And heard Rachel mutter his name . . .
“LADIES!” boomed the voice from the doorway, jerking Jesse’s eyelids open. “IT’S SO GODDAMN GREAT TO SEE YOU!”
Natalie began to scream then, cringing back instinctively in the tight confines of her high chair. Rachel had the baby up and in her arms within a second, backing rapidly away. The bowl of baby Spaghetti-Os clattered noisily to the floor. All this went on in the periphery of Jesse’s vision.
Her gaze was fixed upon the dead man in the doorway.
“EEYAAOW! YOU IN PARTICULAR, JESS! GOD, ARE YOU A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES!”
He laughed, and it was all wrong: a high-pitched trilling, like a gale wind blown through a rot-clogged pipe. There was a burble at the back of it that sent the taste of bile to her tongue.
“Pete, no,” she croaked. She wanted to back up as well, but her back was already to the wall. There was nothing to do but look at him while the weakness in her body intensified, magnified, consumed her.
Pete laughed again, in the flesh. His flesh looked bad: pasty-white and blotchy, like a loaf of molding, uncooked dough. His teeth, exposed, were yellow and brittle as Indian corn. Silver shades concealed his eyes.
“Yes,” said another voice from behind him. “Believe me. All the way here, he’s been talkin’ about nothing but you.”
Two more Screamers came in. The speaker was older, tall and thin. He looked like Keith Richards and talked like Bruce Dern. He was the only one who appeared even remotely alive. The other one was just a kid and looked even worse than Pete.
Rachel had retreated to Jesse’s side at the far end of the kitchen, her screaming daughter tight in her arms. “What’s going on here, Pete?” she said, her voice taut to cracking. She was scared. She was trying very hard not to show it. She took another step back. “I mean, wh-what are you people doing here?”
“Well, shoot, Rachel!” Peter howled, stepping forward. “Just about anything we WANT, I guess!”
Rachel bolted and ran. The littlest Screamer started after her. For the first time, Jesse noticed the knife in his hand. She shrieked, pressing against the wall as they hurtled past her. For one lunatic second, she thought about running too.
Then she stared into the black gaze.
Of the barrel.
Of the gun.
“You stay right there, little missy.” Kyle said, “Mr. Peter would like to share a moment with you.”
Upstairs, Rachel began to scream.
And Natalie, suddenly, stopped.
If not for a defective soldering iron, Cody never would have seen them at all.
He was down at the shack; the lodge had gotten too weird. Until the boys settled down, he didn’t want to be near them. They were putting out some scary vibes.
Dinky-dow, as Hempstead said. Vietnamese for crazy shit.
There was, of course, always work to be done. It made a great excuse. It was also excellent therapy: there were very few things in Cody’s life that couldn’t be cured by a couple hours of zen and the art of circuit board maintenance.
Which he would have happily gone on with forever.
Had the iron not fritzed out.
It was a budget Radio Shack model; and when it went, it took the lightbulb over his work bench and everything else on that circuit with it.
Including all the other lights in the shack.
Including the VCR feed to the lodge.
“Shit.” He sat there like a fool in the sudden darkness. He cursed several more times before he found and fired up his flashlight. Then he put down the board and made his way over to the circuit box to trip it back. His glance through the window by the box was strictly casual.
It was the movement that caught his eye: out in the woods, furtively menacing, like a pack of stalking wolves. The shadows rapidly consumed them as they moved up the hill, but not before Cody sighted three: two skulking Screamers in black leather and longcoats and a big guy carrying what very much looked like an assault rifle.
“Holy hell,” Cody whispered, clicking off the Duracell. It was the afternoon’s paranoia made flesh; whatever these people were doing, it was not likely to involve the spread of world peace. “They were right.”
And then he started thinking. Fast.
It was roughly three hundred yards from the shack to the big house, most of it a steep incline; they would have a precious few minutes grace. Cody felt his way through the darkness to where the intercom mike was sitting and keyed it on.
“Jeezuz, I hope you guys are nearby,” he said by way of prayer. “Preferably armed.”
“. . . ‘cause we sure as shit got company.”
Cody’s voice crackled through the intercom in the lodge, rupturing the media silence that had come when the big TV shut down. That silence had lasted for fifteen seconds, leaving a load of confusion in its wake.
That confusion was almost fatal.
“CODY!” Jake yelled. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”
There was no answer. Junior and Bob Two stood frozen by the pool table, cues in hand. Hempstead was already moving toward the closet where the rifles were stashed. Jake looked over to the doorway. Slim Jim was nowhere to be seen.
“CODY!” Jake repeated. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN?”
“Shut up.” Hempstead hissed. He had chambered a round in the Kleingeunther by the time Jake started to turn toward him.
And then the Screamer stepped into the doorway.
He was a big greasy fucker with a face like hamburger and a crudely rendered mohawk. He had a True Value Woodsman Special hatchet in one hand. “EEYAAOW!” he howled. “BOOLA BOOLA!”
And charged.
Hempstead turned toward him, aimed, and fired twice.
The Screamer went out the door backward, minus the hatchet and about five pounds of the flesh below the solar plexus. The 140-grain boat-tail spire point was a big bullet, better suited to bringing down elk or caribou: the sheer shock of impact blew a crater-sized hole in the Screamer, pitching him violently onto the redwood porch.
“Get your fucking gun,” Hempstead said, moving toward the door.
Jake didn’t need to be told twice. He raced toward the closet, got his weapon in his hands, ran to where Hempstead was standing, and stared at the Screamer.
Who should have been dead.
But wasn’t.
The Screamer lay in a long skid mark of gore, twitching and flailing. His spinal column had been sheared away between the fourth and sixth vertebrae; his lower half dragged uselessly behind him, connected only by tendrils of ruined muscle and skin. The white fluted ends of his shattered spine jutted out into the cool night air.
There was obviously pain: that much had, clearly, not been stripped away. But the lunatic sound that spewed forth from his lips was somewhere between a laugh and a howl, as though this whole thing were somehow insanely funny.
Then Jake heard the windows begin to crash in from behind him.
And nothing was funny.
At all.
She had slipped and fallen near the top of the stairs. She hadn’t planned it. She was helpless to stop it. At the rate she was moving, there was no time for thought.
She slipped. She fell. She hit with a thud.
And Natalie went horribly silent.
There was a second then, unbelievably long, when Rachel Adams felt her sanity fly out of her like a torpedo. Then the footsteps began to thunder up behind her, and she knew there was no time for insanity, no time for (ticking around. Her baby was fine—her baby had to be fine, there was no way she could live if her baby was not fine—and so she hauled herself, screaming, to her feet.
The tip of the utility knife caught her behind the kneecap, a glancing blow that slashed its way diagonally down across her calf. She stumbled again, now at the top of the steps, screaming even harder, the blade snicking another shallow groove out of her flesh, making an X as she dragged herself, bleeding and tearing, forward.
The door to Ted’s bedroom flew open. The sound of The Scream thundered into the hall. Light formed a wedge on the hardwood floor, then filled with shadow. Ted flew into view.
Rachel tried to scream for help. The word was superceded by the rending of her flesh as the Screamer began to enjoy himself now, blade going snik and snik and snik, carving out little divots from the small of her back. She rose up from the waist, screeching, then fell back down again, her ear pressed to the infant chest of the limp form in her arms. She swore she heard a heartbeat there, even over the sound of her own shrill screams.
“YOU CAN’T HAVE HER, MOTHERFUCKER!” she heard herself howl, releasing Natalie to the wood floor and whirling, exposing her belly to the killing blade as she grappled for the arm that held it. . . .
Logan was positioned on the outskirts of the parking apron, belly down with an AK47 in his hands. Things were already out of control: Burger Boy hadn’t even made it through the door before they’d popped his dumb dead ass. Now Hamer and the big nigger were standing over him like a couple of sitting fucking ducks.
Logan cursed as he set the selector switch on semiauto and pulled back the bolt on the Kalishnakov; he’d tried to tell Walker that you shouldn’t send boys to do a man’s job, and piss on the loose strings. Now he’d just have to go ahead and prove it.
He already had Hamer’s hairy head sighted when a crash came from within the lodge; they both ducked in before he could squeeze off.
“Dammit!” he hissed, and raised up on his knees. Now he’d have to go inside.
He was just standing to do so when the shadow swooped down behind him like an angel of death. One hand grabbed the top of his skull; the other slammed a gun barrel into the hollow behind his right ear. His sight starred over in a billion bright pinpoints of pain, blinding him. The click of a revolver’s hammer pulling back was louder than life itself, the voice of doom that followed even more so. “Don’t even think about it, asshole.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Cody was fumbling with the Trident when the first reports echoed down the trail. It was hard in the dark, but easier than dealing with the instantaneous unraveling of the fabric of higher consciousness: shoot now, philosophize later. Great choices.
He was terrified. The aesthetics of archery were of small comfort against the prospect of unknown gun-toting maniacs roaming the grounds. He knew the territory; they could reload faster. It didn’t even out.
He got the Trident locked and ready and fell back into the furthermost shadows of the shack, heart pounding wildly. He could hear them yelling up the hill and down, wondered wildly if anyone else would hear it.
He doubted it. The downside of seclusion: no neighbors around to call the police or the cavalry or the Marines or . . .
A shadow passed across the window. Cody’s heart froze. Someone was directly outside the cabin. He sunk further back into a recess between two audio racks until only his left hand extended, the crossbow pointed at quivering head-level to the door some thirty feet away. Random vestiges of reason whirled like dervishes in his mind, going oh my god what am i gonna do i can’t really kill anyone can i don’t even eat meat please god damn i can’t deal with this i
The door kicked open. A crossing shadow filled it.
And Cody fired.
He didn’t even mean to: the action was closer to premature ejaculation than premeditation. Eight inches of steel-tipped fiberglass went singing through the air in a kinetic parabola, tracing a deadly arc from Cody’s hand to the shadow’s head. The impact of the bolt knocked the thing right back into the doorjamb, where it remained. Spraddled. Struggling.
Pinned.
Cody squirmed out of his hiding place and threw the circuit breaker. Light flooded the length of the shack.
And his target became horribly clear.
The bolt had entered through the left eye socket and punched clean through the back of its head, embedding itself in the splintered wood of the jamb. The thing was effectively nailed.
But the thing was still alive.
And the bolt through its head had only slowed it down. The wound just seemed to piss it off. It snapped and spit and grabbed at the back of its head, twisting and straining against the shaft until it made a sound like a crowbar ripping through rotted cantaloupe. Its other socket, equally eyeless, squinted at him with total, killing rage.
Cody was scared; scared that it would any second wrench free of its skull-mooring and come screaming toward him; afraid to try to scramble past. Inadvertently, Cody froze. The thing in the doorway pulled and growled.
And the bolt held.
For the moment . . .
There were two of them in the room, surrounded by the broken glass from their entry. Both of them were Screamers. Both of them were armed: bowie knife on the left, length of chain on the right. Jake sized them up in the second it took to lever a cartridge into the chamber. Hempstead, to his left, was already aiming. There was no question as to who should shoot whom.
Then the third Screamer came through the doorway behind them and fucked up everything.
Hempstead was the first to whirl, just in time for hand-to-hand. Jake turned just in time to watch it happen, remembered where he was, turned back again. The Screamers had not stood still. The one on the left was moving toward him. The one on the right was six feet from Junior and closing.
Bob Two and Junior had been frozen throughout. Jake understood it, even as he brought the scope to his eye and lined the cross hairs. It was the difference between people who’d been there and people who hadn’t. That simple. Until it happened, you didn’t know.
And once it happened, you never forgot.
Pulling the trigger was easy. Automatic. Jake could see the hole before it happened, and that didn’t even matter. He squeezed. The hole appeared. Wet brain and bone sprayed out the back to sparkle in the light.
Behind him Hempstead fired, just once. It gave Jake a nice warm feeling inside. Another one down. All is right with the world. He ejected the spent casing, fed in another shell.
Just as Bob Two’s paralysis broke, and he caught the whirling length of chain with the fat end of his pool cue. Junior seemed suddenly to understand as well. His own cue came up to hit the Screamer in the teeth.
They were bunched too tight for Jake to fire. He watched them struggle for a moment. His own Screamer was not even twitching: understandable, given its absence of head. For the moment, things seemed to be under control.
And then he remembered Rachel . . .
Another sound from the main room: the crunching thud of expensive things falling over. Somebody was ransacking the studio. Somebody was about to die.
Hempstead took a deep breath and readied himself; he couldn’t tell how many were in there, but it was at least two. Maybe armed. Probably armed. His mental scorekeeper tallied that there were three rounds left in the Kleingeunther. Not good. Unavoidable.
They were really ripping into shit, more like a destroy than a search, but with plenty of both. Hempstead considered falling back to reload, decided against it. Dinky-dao, he thought. Oh, well.
He stepped into the doorway. There were two, all right: a ferret-faced Screamer who looked fifteen, tops, and an older, mercenary hardcase-type. The latter was by Jesse’s keyboards, digging around and cursing. The ferret was tipping over speaker cabinets and laughing. The man took one look at Hempstead and the Kleingeunther and bolted for the door, clutching a small box like a tight end at the thirty-yard line.
Hempstead fired and missed, the bullet smashing into the wall inches behind the fleeing man. He chambered another round and aimed. The hardcase hit the screen.
And the ferret went wild.
In the split second of inattention he had grabbed a stray mike stand, which he hefted and swung. The tubular steel rod connected with Hempstead’s forehead with brutal force, smacking him in the temple and sending him careening into the wall. The Kleingeunther fell clattering to the floor, its breech still opened, its roun
d unchambered. The world went sideways and down; Hempstead joined it, crashing to the floor. A hot gout of blood spurted from the gash that had opened up on the side of his head.
The ferret straddled Hempstead, grinning maniacally, the mike stand still in hand. He raised it like a posthole digger, its heavy metal base directly over the fallen man’s skull.
“SEE YOU IN HELL, ASSHOLE!” the ferret screeched.
He raised the stand higher, screaming “EEAYOWW!” . . .
. . . as twin explosions blew from the top of the stairs, sending double-barreled buckshot firing into the ferret’s straining back. Lead-flecked goo punched through the rancid fabric of his shirt to spatter Jackson Pollock designs on the wall. What remained pitched forward in a hundred-pound heap, landing squarely atop Hempstead.
“GAHHHH!” he screeched, squirming out from under it. The stench was incredible, like having a sack of sun-ripened road-kill dropped on your head. Its death was a foregone conclusion. He pushed it off and looked for the source of his reprieve.
He found her at the top of the stairs, an ancient double-barreled shotgun propped on the banister for support. Gram looked down at him, eyes wide with fear and a flinty moral resolve.
“Burglars,” she said.
. . . and Jake was running, running down the hill, his mind a blank that screamed her name as he thundered down the path, praying to God that he wasn’t too late . . .
. . . and when one of the Screamers charted an intercept course, he blew out its breastbone without missing a beat, one foot after another, nothing getting in his way, God help the whole world if one single solitary goddamned thing got in his way . . .
. . . as, from the house below, he heard the last of the screams . . .
* * *
. . . and it all went down in a matter of seconds: the short race down the hall to the top of the stairs, past the tiny still form of his sister, his black boot coming back, then up, driving into the Adam’s apple of the Screamer, who whooped and flew back as his neck pulped and snapped, the knife flying backwards, the Screamer as well, careening down the staircase and into the rail. Ted followed, taking the steps two at a time, scooping up the knife as the Screamer lay there twitching like a beetle on its back, belly up and open as the knife came down and tore it open, came up, came down, came up again.
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