The knocking continued unabated.
“Hector. Let me in.”
Jumpy, he turned around, certain that he would see that mud man behind him, but the chapel remained empty save for himself, and he walked slowly back up the aisle toward the altar, glancing from left to right, alert for any sign of movement, ready for anything. But nothing appeared, and though the knocking continued, and the voice—
“Hector. Let me in.”
—occasionally spoke to him, he ignored them both.
Kneeling before the crucifix at the front of the church, bowing his head, he prayed for guidance.
****
Cameron Holt jerked awake just as the gunshot that would have taken his life was fired. The sound of the shot morphed into thunder, and he sat up in bed, inspired by the nightmare, suddenly knowing what he had to do.
Lightning flashed, and the thunder that followed was so loud that it shook the house. He hobbled over to the window, wincing in pain with every step. As he’d hoped, Jorge was standing sentry in front of the smokehouse. Cameron saw no other men with him. Whether they had run off, were sleeping or were dead made no difference to him. The important thing was that Jorge was alone, and before that situation changed, Cameron hurried into the hall and down the stairs, moving as fast as he could, though it took every ounce of determination he had not to cry out in anguish.
Once downstairs, he went directly to his gun case and pulled out his favorite weapon, his Dirty Harry gun, the .357 Magnum he’d bought because of the Clint Eastwood movie and that he’d never been able to use in the way he wanted to. Ammunition was in the drawer below, and he sorted through the boxes of bullets and magazines until he found what he needed.
He walked outside.
It was raining hard, and he probably should have put on a raincoat or, at the very least, a hat, but he walked out barefoot in his long johns. Jorge was standing before the door of the smokehouse. Guarding it, Cameron supposed. For some reason, the cholo was facing the barn, not the house, not the drive, and for that he was grateful. He seemed tense, his body language that of an animal awaiting a predator attack. In the flash of lightning, Cameron saw glistening rain pouring down the foreman’s jacket and could not help smiling. Now Jorge really was a wetback.
The sound of the storm hid the noise of his own awkward movements, but Cameron approached cautiously, aware that even a slight turn of the head by the other man could destroy any advantage he had.
Both hands were holding the Magnum.
He was soaking wet, and the mud beneath his feet made him think of walking through shit. Reaching the edge of the smokehouse, he stopped. He was close but not too close, and he raised the gun. “Jorge!” he shouted.
The foreman turned around.
And Cameron blew his head off.
There was a sound from the smokehouse, an inhuman wail loud enough to be heard even over the clap of thunder that exploded at precisely that second. The thunder faded away, but the wailing continued, a keening that grew louder and higher as Jorge’s body fell into the mud. Cameron covered his ears with the index finger of his left hand and the butt of the Magnum held in his right, the sound boring painfully into his brain before growing thinner and then fading away as it moved beyond the range of human hearing.
Instantly, the storm stopped. It was as though a faucet had been turned off, and while clouds continued to blot out the moon and stars, no rain came down, no lightning flashed, no thunder pealed.
Cameron peered through the darkness. Without the aid of the lightning, he could barely see the smokehouse through the gloom. But this was his big chance, and if he was going to dispose of the body of that thing inside, he needed to do so quickly.
He was afraid to go into the shed, however, afraid even to touch the outside of the door. Burning down the building was still his best option, he thought, but had all the rain inoculated it against fire? Still looking toward the smokehouse entrance, he tried gathering his courage…only he had no courage to gather. For all he knew, that wailing was continuing, moving now beyond the range of dogs’ hearing, a call by the monster to others of its kind.
Cameron backed away from the building before some mysterious power struck him down, or his mind was taken over as Jorge’s had been, or a group of ranch hands emerged from the barn to attack him.
The barn.
Cameron frowned. Why had Jorge been staring at the barn?
He decided to see for himself, and, making a wide circle around the front of the smokehouse, still holding tightly to the gun, he limped through the dimness toward the structure. After the tumult of the storm, the calm was eerie. There were no animal or insect sounds, not even the chirping of crickets or cicadas. But he thought he heard his own name, spoken low, and he looked around the darkened yard, wishing he had brought a flashlight.
“Cameron!”
It was his name, spoken louder this time, and he realized that it was coming from the corral.
That was where Jorge had been looking, not the barn.
Either his eyes were getting used to the dark, or the weak diffused porchlight from the house just happened to fall at the right angle, because when he glanced toward the corral, he thought he saw movement. Hobbling as quickly as he could through the still-squishy mud, he was almost immediately able to make out the lines of the fence. In the center of the open space beyond, in sharp contrast against the pale dirt, he saw figures. Men. Three of them. One said his name again, and all three seemed to be waving their hands, though whether they were beckoning him closer or warning him away, he could not yet tell. His grip on the gun tightened.
Three steps further, and he could see who they were. Cal Denholm. Jim Haack. Joe Portis. He was shocked, though he probably shouldn’t have been. The other ranchers had obviously snuck onto his property under the cover of night and storm, no doubt intending to destroy the body in the smokehouse, and he was filled with an optimism and sense of hope that he hadn’t experienced since before all of this started. Did they know that Jorge was dead? They had to have heard the shot, though the storm was at its height at the time and the sound could have blended in with the thunder. Without Jorge to guard the smokehouse, they would have a clear crack at the monster, and if they had enough gasoline or turpentine, they might even be able to set the building on fire despite all of the rain. Excited, Cameron made his way toward the corral gate—
And a steer blocked his way.
For a moment, he thought it was an accident, a coincidence, but then the animal stopped, turning to look at him, and he saw the awareness on its face. Another steer walked purposely over from the direction of the barn. There was a slight greenish glow about the animal, as though it were a radioactive character in a cartoon, and in that instant he understood the situation. The other ranchers were not trying to sneak over to the smokehouse. They had tried that, but they had been caught, and they had been herded into the pen by…cattle.
Cameron backed up slowly, ready to fire if need be. Behind the first steer, Jim was waving his hands in a pantomime that he did not understand. Cal was whispering something he could not quite hear.
Another steer had appeared from somewhere. Cameron glanced around, looking for more, but saw no others. For all he knew, these three were all that was left of his herd.
Lightning struck nearby, and he jumped at the decibel-busting thunder that instantly followed.
It was as though the thunder and lightning had jarred something loose in his brain. The situation before him was suddenly clarified, and he looked back toward the smokehouse, which appeared to be lit from inside, lines of light seeping out from between cracks in the wood.
Now he remembered. He was supposed to protect the angel.
How could he have gotten so far off track?
It didn’t matter. He was once again on course, with the program, and he looked into the eyes of the steer blocking his way. The animal stepped aside to let him pass.
“Thank God,” Cal said. “You’ve got to get us out of here
. These fucking—” He stopped, seeing something in Cameron’s eyes. There was fear in his voice. “You’re not going to let us go, are you?”
Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked overhead.
“No.” Cameron said, raising the gun.
“You don’t want to do this…”
“Don’t worry,” he promised. “I’ll take you out clean.”
And he did.
THIRTY ONE
When Ross awoke, just before dawn, his laptop was open on the table, the screen shining brightly. He didn’t remember leaving it on, didn’t even remember seeing it when the storm woke him up in the middle of the night, but, then, he’d been tired.
Walking over to turn off the laptop, something nagged at him, something that was wrong.
Wait a minute.
Why was the screen bright?
His tired brain was just beginning to sort through and process the information it was receiving, and he realized that even if he had left the laptop on, the screensaver would have kicked in. Then, a half hour after displaying a photo of sunrise at the Grand Canyon, the laptop would have gone into sleep mode, and the screen would have gone dark.
He approached the table warily, leaning over the back of the chair to see what was being displayed. It was a list of email messages that had been sent since last night, and to his amazement there was an entire page of them. Sitting down and reading over the subject lines, he saw that they were from various companies in the aerospace industry.
All of them were offering him jobs.
He blinked, thinking for a moment that he was dreaming.
He wasn’t. It was astounding, this sudden wealth of opportunities, and he scrolled down the list, reading each message, overcome by the offers, any one of which he would be grateful to accept. He noted the locations—San Diego, Long Beach, Denver, Dallas, Houston—and the proposed salaries: a hundred and twenty, a hundred, a hundred and forty, a hundred and ten…
Stunned, he sat there as the sun rose in the east. He’d heard that the economy was starting to rebound, but this was so ridiculously over the top as to be unbelievable. These offers were solid. Guaranteed. He had his pick of twenty-four positions, and all he had to do was decide which one he wanted. It was a dream come true, the answer to his prayers, every positive cliché he could come up with. He smiled. Suddenly, he was no longer of this place, and the problems that had been consuming him up to now seemed small and unimportant. Magdalena was about to be history, and he would never have to worry about weird storms or metamorphosing monsters ever again.
Only…
This was one of the problems. He knew it even as he tried to deny it. Like other people who had come into contact with that…thing, his luck had changed, the polarities of his fortunes had reversed, and he wondered if that was a survival technique on the part of the monster, a defense mechanism, a way to distract people from what should be their real focus. Because he was distracted. He didn’t want to be, knew he shouldn’t be, but his brain was already sifting through the pros and cons of various cities, weighing the positions and their compensation packages. In his mind, he had moved on, and Magdalena and everything that had happened here was rapidly fading into the past.
Jill.
The thought of her grounded him instantly in the here and now.
Lita.
This wasn’t just an interlude, a memory best forgotten. The past two-and-a-half months had been an important transitional period in his life. Lita and Dave were lifesavers, there for him when no one else had been, and Jill was someone who, for perhaps the first time, he could see spending his future with. No matter what occurred after, his time in Magdalena had been valuable and significant, and what had happened here would send ripples, good and bad, throughout the rest of his days.
First things first. He needed to talk to Lita, Dave and Jill, and tell them about the offers. He was hoping he could convince Jill to come with him—which, after that freaky incident with her ex-dog, shouldn’t be too hard—but he thought that he should also try to get Lita and Dave to get away from Magdalena. His cousin and her husband weren’t going to find a solution to what was happening here; they were going to get sucked into the vortex. He saw that now. Instead of vanquishing the monster, they would become two more of its victims. They had new money. They could afford to go elsewhere, even if only for awhile, until this all blew over.
If it blew over.
He thought of Jill’s paintings and their apocalyptic visions.
Quickly, Ross got dressed, opening the door and looking toward the Big House to see if Lita and Dave were awake.
The ground between the shack and the house was covered with bright red flowers. They had popped up overnight, and they were growing in the yard, in the hard dirt of the drive, in the garden. Dazed, he stepped outside, onto the porch, to get a more panoramic view. They were everywhere. The entire surrounding desert was a sea of red.
And the flowers had faces.
His heart was thumping so loudly he could hear it in his head. His legs were shaking. Seeing that cocooned body in Holt’s shed had been utterly terrifying, a feeling he did not think could be surpassed, but the scope of this took his breath away. In his wildest dreams, he would not have thought it possible for flowers to be scary, but the little crimson faces surrounded by sunbeam petals frightened him on a primal level he did not understand. They looked like something out of a video game, but they were not smiling and looking at him, not swaying from side to side or dancing in place. They stared straight ahead, thinking, and the mere fact that the plants were sentient was so wrong that his entire body was covered in gooseflesh.
The flowers were whistling a song, he suddenly realized, in unison, and it was the same tune he and Jill had heard from the chickens in the middle of the night.
Another noise cut through the cool morning air. The sound of a door slamming. Ross looked to the right, back toward the house, to see Lita running across the yard toward him, barefoot and wearing a bathrobe, apparently oblivious to the carpet of flowers through which she was running. He knew instantly that something terrible had happened—even if it had not shown in her face, it was there in her body language—and he stepped off the porch to meet her, feeling the soft give of the flowers beneath his shoes. The sensation was repulsive, like stepping on worms.
“Oh, Rossie!” she cried, throwing her arms around him.
“What is it?”
“My mom died!”
“Aunt Kate?” Of course it was Aunt Kate. What a stupid thing to say.
Lita was sobbing. “I have to go, Rossie. I have to plan the funeral, I have to…I don’t know what I have to do, but there’s only me, and it’s all my responsibility.”
He held her.
“I want you to come with me.”
He hesitated for only a second. “I think we should all go. Me, you and Dave.” Pulling back a little, he glanced around at the flowers. “Jill, too. I think we need to get out of here.”
Lita nodded, numb but understanding, even in her grief recognizing the enormity of what was going on around them. For the first time she seemed to notice the flowers and, grimacing, she climbed onto his porch, lifting up first her right foot, then her left, in order to look at the soles and make sure that contact with those red abominations had not affected her skin.
“Wear my slippers,” he said, going inside to retrieve them. “Then go back and get dressed.” He brought the slippers out, handing them to her. “They’re probably a little big for you, but it’s better than walking in your bare feet through…” He motioned toward the flowers.
“Thanks.”
“So where is your mom? And what happened?”
She sniffled. “Albuquerque General. It was a drunk driver.”
“Just like—”
“Yeah.” She shivered even as she wiped tears from her eyes. “We got the call last night, in the middle of that storm. I’ve been up ever since. Dave fell asleep about ten minutes ago.”
“I’ll drive, then
. You’re both tired. Go back in, get what you need to get, wake up Dave, make whatever arrangements you have to make, and let’s get out of here as quickly as we can.”
Lita frowned, turning her head. “What’s that music? Are those…are those flowers whistling?”
“Yes,” he told her. “So do what you need to do, and let’s go.”
After watching to make sure she got safely back to the house, Ross went inside and called Jill. She was obviously still asleep—it took her five rings to answer the phone—and when she spoke, she sounded frazzled. But he told her they were leaving Magdalena and they wanted her to come with them.
“Leaving?” she said. “What does that mean? For good?”
“I don’t know.”
But he did know. Although he hadn’t planned on bringing anything with him other than his laptop and the clothes on his back, Ross suddenly realized that he was leaving Magdalena and not coming back. It was time to cut and run. Wasn’t that the phrase politicians used? It was always meant as a pejorative, but sometimes bailing was the best policy. You needed to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, and right now it was time to cut, run, leave, flee and put Magdalena in his rearview mirror.
“Yes,” he said. “For good. And I want you to come with me.” He quickly explained to her about the rash of job offers, and Lita’s mother’s death. “After what happened yesterday with your dog, and everything else that’s going on, it’s not safe to be here anymore. We need to be realistic. We can’t fight this. We can’t do anything about it. All we can do is leave. You said yourself that you can do your telemarketing anywhere. Well, do it somewhere else. Maybe it’ll be safe to come back later, maybe not, but for right now, I think the best thing to do is to get as far away from Magdalena as quickly as possible.”
He expected an argument, expected to have to do more to convince her, but to his surprise, she said, “Okay.”
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