“No, I’m not on anything,” he answered, his voice cold. “And I haven’t been drinking, either. I’m telling you, something chased me into the cemetery. I saw your headlights and made a run for it.”
“Okay, okay. I believe you,” Jim said. “Settle down a little. You say something was chasing you. What was it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know...a bear, maybe.”
Jim grinned. “Son, I hate to say it, but there aren’t any bears around here.”
“Try telling that to the bear,” Buddy said sharply.
“Listen, kid,” Jim said, staring at him. “I’ve been hunting in these parts for over twenty years, and I’m telling you--” He hesitated. His voice softened. “All right, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll have a look around. You wait here.”
Buddy almost laughed; he wasn’t about to offer to go with him.
Jim walked back around to the driver’s door of his truck and reached in through the open window. He pulled a lever-action hunting rifle from the gun rack. He also grabbed something out of the glove box. Walking back to where Buddy stood, he cocked the rifle and flipped off the safety.
“Here,” he said, handing him the paper sack. “You look like you could use some of this. Just don’t go telling anybody I gave it to you.”
The bag contained an unopened pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Buddy removed the bottle and broke its paper seal. Tipping his head back, he took a big swallow. The whiskey burned his throat and forced tears to his eyes, but it made some of the weakness go away. He started to take another sip but decided against it and slipped the bottle back into the sack. He’d better not get drunk; he still had a motorcycle to get home.
He watched as Jim walked about three hundred feet down the lane, carefully looking to the cemetery side of the road. He didn’t go into the cemetery, nor did he stray beyond the glow of the truck’s headlights. A few minutes later he returned.
“You on the level about this?” he asked, laying his rifle across the hood of the pickup.
Buddy nodded.
“Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now.” Jim scratched his beard. “I’ll give the wildlife agency a call in the morning to see if anyone else reported seeing anything unusual. Maybe it was a bear.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “By the way, what in God’s name are you doing out here at night anyway?”
“My bike broke down about a mile back, and--”
He stopped. All of a sudden there was a strange crackling in the air about him, like the sensation during an electrical storm when lightning is popping everywhere and the air is filled with electrons.
“You feel that?” he asked. The hairs on his arms stood straight up.
“Yeah,” Jim nodded. “Must be a storm brewing.”
Buddy looked up. The sky was clear.
A sharp breeze came up, blowing dust across the road and making the branches of the trees swing and sway. Oddly enough, only the branches of the trees in their immediate area moved. Trees farther away stood strangely motionless, as if no wind caressed their foliage.
Terror grabbed him by the gut. He knew, without really knowing how he knew, that the thing from the cemetery was close by--that it was coming for them. He wanted desperately to run, but his legs refused to obey.
“What the fuck--” Jim picked up his rifle and stepped away from the truck. He was watching the branches of the trees on the opposite side of the road.
“It’s coming...” Buddy whispered, his voice cracking. He wanted to hide, to cover his eyes so he wouldn’t see, but he couldn’t move.
“What did you say?” Jim turned back around. Something rose up behind him.
Amber eyes blazed in a head of monstrous proportions. The creature was close enough now that Buddy could see every detail of its powerful body, every line of its hideous face. It was definitely not a bear.
He tried to scream a warning, but only a soft hissing of air escaped his constricted throat.
Jim, hearing movement behind him, spun around. Black claws sliced the air.
Something splashed across Buddy’s face and upper body. Warm. Wet. He licked his lips, tasted blood.
Jim dropped the rifle and took a staggering step backward. He turned around and stared at Buddy, stared through him, his eyes wide and glazed. He tried to speak, but didn’t--couldn’t--because he no longer had anything to talk with.
Jim’s coarse brown beard was gone, as was the lower half of his face and part of his throat. Only thin strips of muscle and tissue remained where once his lower mandible had been. His windpipe lay exposed in the severed throat, gurgling with blood as it struggled to draw in air. There was one final dying gasp as the big man fell forward.
Buddy looked away from Jim, his gaze riveted on the monster just beyond. A funny bubbling noise erupted from his stomach as his bowels turned loose, filling the seat of his pants. He knew that he was going to be more than just late for a date. He screamed.
Chapter 2
William “Skip” Harding awoke, muttered a curse and grabbed the telephone before it could ring a third time. Katie, his wife, murmured something incoherent as she turned away and drifted back to sleep. The phone call wouldn’t be for her; it never was. Switching on the table lamp beside the bed, Skip turned his alarm clock around to face him.
Christ, it’s only 3:15. This had better be good.
“Hello,” Skip answered, his mind still fuzzy with sleep. Fragments of a strange dream faded back into his subconscious. Something about Indians. And arrows.
“Hello...Sheriff?” said the voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but...”
Skip recognized the acute, nasal-pitched voice as that of Undersheriff Lloyd Baxter, a veteran with the Hobbs County Sheriff’s Department for over eight years. Lloyd was tall and scarecrow-thin, with a set of gangling arms that always showed a few extra inches of wrist at the cuff. Despite his irritating voice--caused by a constant case of bad sinuses--Skip knew Lloyd as one of the best men on the force. He would never call this late at night unless it was something important--something that couldn’t wait.
“Go ahead, Lloyd. I’m all ears.”
Skip sat up in bed and fumbled a filterless Camel out of the crumpled pack lying on the nightstand. He lit the cigarette with his “girlie” lighter--a refillable butane with a picture of a gorgeous redhead on the side of it; when the lighter was turned upside down the woman’s black bathing suit slowly disappeared. The lighter was a birthday present from the boys at the station. He used it only because it drove Katie crazy when he pulled it out in public. Driving your wife a little crazy could be good for a relationship, even if sometimes it got you a black eye in the process.
Skip didn’t pay much attention to the lighter clutched tightly in his beefy hand. What he was hearing over the phone cleared his head of the last of its nocturnal fogginess. It also put a vile taste deep in the back of his mouth.
“I’m out here on Cemetery Road, in front of the cemetery,” Lloyd continued. “Seems we’ve got a double homicide on our hands. Two Caucasian males. One’s a juvenile. Somebody did a number on them, cut them up pretty bad. I think you ought to get down here.”
“Right, I’m on my way,” Skip whispered.
He carefully placed the receiver back on its cradle, trying to make as little noise as possible. He didn’t want to wake Katie because he didn’t want to explain what the phone call was about. No sense in her losing a good night’s sleep too.
Slipping out of bed, he experienced a slight shudder of delight as his feet came in contact with the polished wood floor. He loved the feeling of a wooden floor; it brought back memories of childhood. Despite Katie’s arguments to carpet when they renovated, the floors in their house remained just as bare as the day they moved in.
Grabbing his brown uniform pants off the back of a chair, he removed a matching shirt from the walk-in closet. After that came a pair of white athletic socks and his favorite cowboy boots. The boots, scuffed and worn to the point of fa
lling apart, were his most comfortable pair for walking--something he was sure he would be doing a lot of before the night was through.
As he buttoned the collar of his shirt, his fingers brushed against the shell gorget he wore. About the size of a half dollar, the shell disk was decorated with the carved images of a spider encircled by a rattlesnake. Two holes were drilled in the top of the disk, just big enough to slip a piece of leather cord through. Years ago he had found the gorget while walking along the banks of Lost Creek. His grandmother had told him it was good luck, and he had worn it ever since.
He tucked his shirt in and removed his gun belt from where it hung on the brass coat tree. His gun was a Colt Trooper .357 magnum with a four-inch barrel, loaded with semi-jacketed hollow points for extra stopping power. He buckled up, switched off the table lamp and stepped quietly into the hallway. Halfway down the hall he stopped to check in on William “Billy” Harding, Jr., as he always did before going out.
The nine-year-old slept soundly, one leg protruding from the protective warmth of a G.I. Joe blanket. He and Katie had wanted a child so badly. When Billy was born it was their dream come true. He meant everything to them. He was everything worth working for, worth living for.
Skip inched the door open a fraction farther. The light from the hallway danced across Billy’s bed, falling upon the hearing aid lying upon the night table. An icicle stabbed deep into Skip’s heart.
Billy was barely four when he took sick. At first they thought it was something minor--the flu perhaps. But despite all precautions, the boy’s temperature continued to climb. He was so pale, so deathly ill when they rushed him to the emergency room at the county medical center. The doctor who examined him seemed genuinely concerned, but that didn’t soften his diagnosis any: rheumatic fever.
The days that followed were a blur: the I.V.’s, the shots, the pain of watching Billy suffering, the feeling of helplessness as infection set in. Skip and Katie were both so drained in the end that the final blow wasn’t as bad as it should have been. It didn’t really sink in until much later. He still remembered the doctor’s exact words: “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Harding, but the fever has damaged your son’s eardrums. Your son is deaf....”
Not only had Billy lost all hearing in his right ear, and most of it in his left, but he had also lost the ability to speak. He wasn’t unable to speak; he just no longer seemed willing to try, as if the sickness had caused a mental block.
Of course, the disabilities could never change the way they felt towards their son; nothing could ever change that. It just wasn’t fair to the boy. Still, he’d adapted fairly well to the situation. He made good grades in school and got along great with the other kids. The hearing aid helped some. He could pick up an occasional, high-pitched sound in his left ear. He’d also developed an extraordinary ability to read lips, which made it next to impossible to keep secrets from him.
With a sigh, Skip closed the door.
Before leaving the house, Skip grabbed the Winchester 1200 riot gun from the hallway closet. A light layer of dust coated the shotgun. It had been a long time since he had reason to carry the Winchester with him. Logan was a peaceful town, Hobbs a quiet county. At least it had been until a couple of hours ago. Slipping the chain on the back door, he stepped outside. It was going to be one hell of a night.
Finishing the last of the brackish coffee, Skip tossed the Styrofoam cup on the floorboard. He’d stopped off at Nancy’s Cafe long enough to grab a quick cup before heading out of town. The diner had been quiet, it usually was early in the morning. A pimple-faced teenager was working the counter while a waitress named Rosemary, who had green teeth and a stained yellow apron, sat in one of the booths, sucking on a Coca-Cola. The cafe’s only customer was a grimy young man with a scraggly beard and a few too many tattoos. He’d given Skip an “I’m just waiting for the bus” look and gone back to eating his hamburger and fries.
A couple of sheets of plywood had covered two of the cafe’s front windows. The tiny restaurant was the only place in town to suffer any damage in Friday’s earthquake. Skip supposed everyone had gotten off pretty lucky, considering the quake was a six on the Richter scale. Rumor was it had rattled windows as far away as South Bend, Indiana.
The center of the quake was the New Madrid fault, located about a hundred miles southeast of Logan, near the town of the same name. It’d been a little over a year since the fault last acted up. Nothing serious then, either, just a few tremors. But back in 1811, New Madrid shook a good one, rocking America with its most severe earthquake ever--powerful enough to cause the Mississippi River to reverse its course and flow northward for several hundred miles. For years experts had been predicting a repeat of the 1811 quake.
Skip hoped the scientists were wrong because the city of St. Louis was built over a system of underground caverns. Back when the city was known as Port St. Louis the caverns had been used for the refrigeration of meat, cheese, wine, hides and other commodities. Since then most of the caverns had been sealed off and long forgotten; many of the city’s residents didn’t even know they existed. They’d find out about them if there was another major earthquake, however, because half the city would be in the basement.
Turning off Cherry Lane onto Cemetery Road, Skip reached down and shifted his Bronco II, smiling at the way the four-wheel-drive truck gripped the road. Five minutes later he spotted the blue flashing lights of the two patrol cars that were already on the scene.
When dealing with a homicide the first officer to arrive at the scene has the responsibility of securing the area. Lloyd was an experienced officer and knew what to do, so it didn’t surprise Skip to see both patrol cars strategically positioned crossways in the road. In between the two cars sat a dirty gray pickup. An area of approximately one hundred feet on each side of the pickup was roped off with bright yellow barrier ribbon. The entrance to the Catholic cemetery was also sealed off. Lloyd stood on the side of the road, talking to one of the deputies. He walked out into the road as Skip drove up and cut the engine.
“What’ve you got so far?” Skip asked as he stepped out of his truck. He was anxious to take charge of the situation before any press could show up.
“What we’ve got is a mess,” Lloyd said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Skip reached behind him and grabbed his flashlight off the seat, closing the truck door. “Who found them?”
“I did,” Lloyd said. “I had Murphy secure the area while I reported in on the car phone. I didn’t dare use the radio; too many people have scanners nowadays. I didn’t think you’d want everyone in on it before you got here. Lord knows they’ll find out about it soon enough.”
Skip looked across the road to the two-story brick home of Bob Sharkey. “Anybody been up to talk to the old man yet?”
“I already sent Murphy up there,” Lloyd said. “Turns out the old boy slept through the whole thing.”
Skip turned to Corporal Randy Murphy, who had joined them in the center of the road. “Get ahold of Logan PD and tell them I need a couple of units to seal off this road. Nobody comes in, nobody goes out. I want this area airtight. Then get in touch with the office and have Sally call Mitchell and Brown in. They won’t like getting out of bed before sunrise, but that’s tough shit. I’m gonna need every man I can get to carry on a halfway decent search out here. Also, I want you to see if we can borrow a light cart from Milland Trucking. They always keep a few backups on hand. We’re also going to need an ambulance out here to transfer the bodies. Tell the driver to stay off the siren and lights; there’s no need to hurry. You got all that?”
Murphy nodded, did a flashy about-face and trotted off.
Skip smiled. Murphy had been on the force less than three years. Though still a little inexperienced, he was bright and eager to learn--qualities that would one day make him a damn good lawman.
Lloyd stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I won’t bullshit you, Skip; this one’s bad. You didn’t just eat, did you?”
Skip appreciated the concern. “Not unless the diner’s coffee counts as a meal.”
Lloyd frowned, turned and started walking toward the pickup. His rigid behavior got Skip to thinking that maybe things were a lot more grim than what he let on over the phone.
They were.
On first impression Skip thought he might be dealing with a case of hit-and-run. A spray of dried crimson was splashed across the pickup’s hood and front bumper. Under their powerful flashlights the blood stood out in stark contrast against the faded gray paint of the old GMC. A small furry animal lay dead on the road just in front of the truck’s bumper. Skip gently prodded the tiny creature with the toe of his boot.
His bowels turned to ice.
Instead of legs and a tail, the underside of the fur revealed a semicircle of gleaming white molars, complete with cavities and fillings. Bile burned its way up Skip’s throat as he realized that what he had mistaken for roadkill was actually the bearded lower jaw of a man.
“God Almighty!”
Straightening up quickly, the sheriff took deep breaths until he felt the pounding in his head start to ease. He hadn’t gotten sick, but he had come damn close. Wiping tears from his eyes, he turned to Lloyd. The expression on Lloyd’s face showed he understood exactly how Skip felt.
“It gets worse,” Lloyd stated solemnly.
Not wanting to disturb any possible evidence, they walked the long way around the truck to the ditch on the opposite side of the road. There was a body in the ditch.
The dead man lay on his back, arms and legs sprawled helter-skelter. His shirt was soaked with blood, so were his jeans. A name tag was sewn over the left pocket of the shirt, but it was so stained with blood it couldn’t be read. One thing was sure, there was no way of identifying the man from his face--or what was left of it. Skip felt his stomach do a slow roll as he thought of the man’s missing jaw and beard lying back in the road.
“Not very pretty, is it?” Lloyd asked.
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