Rockabilly Hell

by William W. Johnstone

Red-faced, Anna began gathering up her torn clothing and covering herself. Eddie Whitfield took off his shirt and handed it to her just as the music changed.

  The voice of Narvel Felts, a living legend in the rock and roll and country field and still performing, came clearly through the night. “Honey Love.”

  “Now will you get the hell out of that parking lot?” Cole shouted to the reporters. “Move, damnit, move! Leave your cars and run for it. Come over here.”

  A few of them did just that, making a dash for the other side of the blacktop.

  Only those few made it.

  A hot wind began blowing around the parking lot. It kicked up whirlwinds and dust devils that created clouds of tiny rocks and dust.

  Then the rains came.

  Didn’t take the reporters and camera crews long to figure out it wasn’t really rain that was drenching them.

  It was urine. Hot, stinking piss.

  Across the road, standing with the group, Susan Marcotte was shaking with fear and anger. She directed that anger toward the sheriff.

  “You son of a bitch!” she shouted at him.

  “I warned you,” Al said. “That was all I could do. Don’t put the blame on me.”

  Across the road, the stinking rain had stopped, and now the wind had picked up, a strong, hot wind. Each time the men and women would try to cross the road, the wind would drive them back.

  The front door to the roadhouse banged open. The neon sign flashed its welcome.

  One of the camera crew from a satellite truck lost it and began screaming, running toward the open door.

  “No!” Cole shouted at her. “No!”

  The young woman jumped for the steps, and the doorway was suddenly filled with men. They dragged her inside, and the door slammed shut.

  The music stopped.

  Her screaming and shrieking filled the strange night.

  “She worked for ABC,” Laura said. “A technician. Sally something-or-another. ”

  “Reynolds,” Cindy said.

  Sally shrieked for several minutes. Her screaming was punctuated with painful protests.

  Her screaming suddenly stopped.

  Those in the parking lot and across the road waited.

  The door opened.

  An ugly belch filled the night.

  Sally was hurled out onto the gravel. She was naked. She began crawling around on her hands and knees, weeping uncontrollably. Don Potter ran to her, taking off his shirt as he ran. He covered her with it and helped her to her bare feet just as the wind began to howl.

  The stinking wind knocked those in the parking lot to the gravel, and began rolling them across the road. The big smoker-cooker was picked up and hurled across the road. It landed on the hood of the sheriff’s car, smashing the hood and the windshield and sending hot coals and ribs and steaks flying all around the group.

  The lids to ice chests flew open and cans and bottles of beer became minibombs in the night.

  “Hit the ground!” Jim yelled, just as a set of drums came flying out the open door, cymbals clashing and banging together in the hot wind. The drum set crashed on the blacktop. The cymbals rolled around for a few seconds, then toppled over.

  A flying bottle of beer knocked Chris Arkin to the ground, cutting a gash in the back of his head.

  A can of Bud hit Arthur Strother in the back and knocked him to the blacktop, bringing a grunt of pain.

  “I hope nobody over there smokes Camels,” Hank said, belly down in the turn row. “Have you ever seen a pissed-off Camel? They can spit for fifty yards.”

  “I cannot believe you are really a priest!” Laura said.

  “Forgive me for not wearing my collar. I’ll try to do better.”

  The minibomb beer barrage stopped. The wind died down. The music began to fade.

  “What’s happening?” Someone asked.

  “It’s settling down, I think,” Cole said. He raised his head and looked across the road.

  The old cars and trucks in the parking lot were beginning to fade. The roadhouse was gradually turning misty. The sign over the door was still blinking its red welcome, but it, too, was beginning to fade.

  Weeds were beginning to appear in the parking lot.

  “Oh, dear God!” Doris McCoy cried out, pointing. “Look at that!”

  It was Tommy Baylor, running down the center of the blacktop, his face and shirt bloody. “Wish me luck, Sis!” he called. He smiled and waved at Katti.

  “Tommy!” Katti called.

  Tommy leaped high into the air.

  He vanished before their astonished eyes.

  Lightning lashed the sky, a furious display of power. Thunder rumbled and rolled all around them. Bolts of lightning struck so close to the men and women, their flesh tingled from the impact and their hair was filled with electricity.

  The lightning strikes began coming so fast they were impossible to count. A rolling, crashing, deafening cannonade of thunder filled the air, trembling the ground beneath their feet, shaking the vehicles parked in the turnrow.

  Susan Marcotte put her hands over her ears. “Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it!”

  The lightning and thunder picked up in intensity. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone in the group that Satan was deliberately mocking her words.

  Hank Milan rose to his knees and began softly praying.

  The Prince of Darkness showed his contempt for them all. The dirty rain began anew, drenching them all with stinking piss. Excrement began falling from the sky, the turds plopping all around them, hitting the ground with plopping sounds.

  The stench was horrible.

  Several of the men and women began vomiting.

  Cole grabbed Katti by the shirt and dragged her under his Bronco.

  The rain of filth ended as abruptly as it began. The lightning ceased its dancing across the skies. The thunder was stilled.

  The men and women began standing up, looking all around them.

  “Did this really happen?” Laura asked, her voice tiny in the night.

  Hank kicked a turd in her direction. “Look at that and make up your own mind.”

  Twelve

  Mysteriously, the electrical systems in all the vehicles were suddenly operational.

  “What the hell?” Jim muttered, cranking his car.

  Cole’s radios were working and the frequencies assigned to the S.O. were jumping. “It’s a war zone in town,” Cole yelled to Al. “Dispatch says everybody’s gone crazy.”

  Kenny Gant and Sally Reynolds were put in the back of a station wagon. “Follow us,” Al told the driver. “We’ll head straight for the hospital.”

  “All right, Sheriff,” the man said in a very subdued voice. “Whatever you say. Sheriff? How . . . I mean . . .” He waved a hand toward the weed-grown parking lot.

  “I don’t know,” Al told him. “I just hope to hell we can make it back to town. I’ll be in that Bronco. Let’s go.”

  When the smoker/grill had landed on Al’s car, it had shorted out the electrical system, rendering the unit inoperable. Al got his guns from the wrecked car and jumped in the Bronco. Katti and Laura were in the back seat. Laura appeared to be in mild shock. Cole had been monitoring the radio.

  “Every available unit from the state police is coming in,” Cole told him. “Tom was unable to reach us, so he called them in. A commander of state police is in town now, and he’s thinking of asking the governor to call out the national guard.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Al reached for the mike and got dispatch. “What’s going on there?”

  “Good to hear your voice, Sheriff,” dispatch said. “We were really worried about you. The whole county’s gone nuts. People shooting and stabbing one another, raping, looting, smashing windows. You name it, it’s happening here.”

  Al shook his head. “Hank was right,” he said to Cole. “We’ve got to control this situation.” He keyed the mike. “That’s 10–4. My ETA is fifteen minutes. Call the hospital. Tell them I’m bringing in two peo
ple, man and a woman, both in shock.”

  “Hospital is full, Sheriff. They’re taking only emergency cases.”

  “Shit!” Al yelled. He punched the talk button. “Put the highway cop on.”

  A second later: “Al? Andy Boyce here.”

  “Andy, get the governor on the horn. Have him call out the national guard. I want this county sealed tight. No one in, no one out. I want roadblocks on every road, every path, every pig trail. I’ll explain when I get there. Just do it, Andy. Please?”

  “All right, Al. No problem. We have a unit right here in town.”

  “No!” Al almost shouted the word. “Not the local people. We can’t use them. They might be, ah, uh, infected. Get someone else.”

  “Infected?” the highway cop said. “Ah ... okay, Al. Will do. I’ll start using my people to set up roadblocks on the main arteries right now.”

  The caravan was stopped by the state police just at the city limits.

  “Oh, hi, Sheriff,” the young highway patrolman said, relaxing when he saw who it was. “We got a real mess in town. And getting worse. All these people with you?”

  “Yes. And once we cross your roadblock, no one leaves. Okay?”

  “Right, Sheriff. Captain Boyce told us. Uh, Sheriff. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Son,” Al replied. “You wouldn’t believe me, if I told you.” He waved Cole on, and the highway cop stepped back and let them through.

  Cole let the sheriff off at the station, and he and Katti and the others went back to the motel to shower and change clothes. They all stunk like a backed-up sewer.

  The town was a mess. Store windows smashed out. Some parked cars and trucks had been set on fire. Only about half of the fire department had reported for duty, and the fire chief was having to rely on as many volunteers as he could muster up to try to control the arson fires.

  The front office of the motel was dark, the lights out. A sign on the door read: CLOSED. NO LONG DISTANCE PHONE SERVICE AVAILABLE IN THE ROOMS.

  “We’ll take turns showering and standing guard,” Cole said. “You ladies go first.”

  “You don’t give me orders,” a reporter said belligerently, getting all up in Cole’s face.

  Bad mistake.

  Cole hit him with a big, flat-knuckled fist. A hard right cross to the side of the man’s jaw. The reporter went down like a sack of potatoes and didn’t move.

  “We’re all under a strain,” Don Potter said. “It’s a tense time.”

  “Yeah? Well, I just untensed him,” Cole said, looking down at the nearly unconscious man.

  Katti winked at him and unlocked the motel room door.

  The reporter Cole had decked moaned, and several of his friends helped him to his rather shaky feet.

  “You got anything else you want to say to me?” Cole asked him, his nose about an inch from the reporter’s nose.

  “Ah, no,” the reporter mumbled the words. A thin trickle of blood leaked out of one corner of his mouth.

  “Fine. Keep it that way and we’ll get along.”

  “Bully!” Susan Marcotte said.

  Cole smiled, very thinly, and spoke about a dozen words in fast Cajun French. He turned his back to the woman and walked off.

  “What’d he say to me?” Susan demanded.

  “Among other things,” Hank Milan said, “he told you to go fuck yourself. However it does lose something in the translation.”

  Cindy shook her head. “Damndest priest I ever encountered,” she muttered.

  * * *

  All over the town and county, the players in this life-and-death struggle paused for a couple of hours to catch their breath. Had they not done so, they just might have been able to fulfill the silent orders that came from the dark part of the Other Side.

  As it was, their pausing gave the authorities time to get into place.

  A national guard military police unit had been called up, and was rushing in from a town about forty miles away. It was a small, undersized company, but was being beefed up by another guard unit coming up from the southwest.

  After a quick shower and change of clothes, Laura Lordan and her cameraman asked if they could ride with Cole and Katti.

  “Sure,” Cole said. “Get in. I’m going down to the sheriff’s office.”

  “Thanks,” Laura said, climbing into the back. “I feel safer around you. You appear to be, ah, very capable.”

  “I think so,” Katti said softly.

  Laura got the woman-to-woman message in those words loud and clear.

  It went right over Cole’s head.

  “This is Eddie King,” Laura said. “My cameraman.”

  Cole nodded at the young man. “Everybody buckled up? Okay.” He dropped the Bronco into drive and headed out of the parking lot.

  Before he got out of the lot, his radio squawked. “Cole,” the voice of Al Pickens jumped out of the speaker. “You 10–8?”

  Cole grabbed the mic. “That’s 10–4.”

  “I gotta use you, Cole. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. What’s up?”

  “Katti with you?”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Have her open that city map I gave you and find Elm street. It’s 802 Elm. Check out a signal 45.”

  “Ten-four. Rolling.” To Katti: “Find it?”

  “Yes. Turn right on Green and then left on Elm. What’s a signal 45?”

  “Shooting.”

  “I’m logging you as 28,” Al’s voice again popped out of the speaker. “That’ll be your assigned number, until this mess is over.”

  “Ten-four,” Cole acknowledged.

  “Twenty-eight? This is Captain Boyce. I’ll back you up on this one. ETA two minutes.”

  “That’s 10–4.”

  “And watch out for bodies in the street,” the captain came back. “One of my people ran over a body just a few minutes ago. Sort of spoiled his evenin’.”

  “Gross!” Laura said.

  “Squashed his head flat with the left front tire,” the captain added.

  “Barf!” Katti said.

  Cop talk can be dark indeed. But it’s a very necessary defense against losing your mind. And your stomach contents.

  Cole angled to the curb across the street from 802 Elm. The front rooms of the house were lighted, and Cole could see someone moving around inside. Captain Boyce pulled in right behind him. “Stay in the car,” Cole told his passengers. He got out and shook hands with the captain of Arkansas State Police.

  “Al briefed me as much as time would permit,” the trooper said. “It’s, ah, hard to believe.”

  Cole nodded in the dim light of street lamps.

  “Don’t shoot, officers,” the woman’s voice came from behind them and spun them around, pistols raised. “I’m the one who called it in,” she added.

  “Step forward into the light, ma’am,” Boyce said. “And keep your hands in front of you.”

  The woman advanced slowly, stepping into the light. She was unarmed, and very frightened.

  “You heard shooting, ma’am?” Cole asked.

  “Heard and saw it. Mr. McClinton shot his wife and two sons. I saw them through that front window. He—”

  She was interrupted by a shotgun blast from the McClinton house. Both men ducked into a crouch.

  “Wonder what he shot at?” Boyce asked.

  “Not at us, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on.”

  Cole told the woman, “You stay here.”

  The men walked across the street and up the driveway. Both of them looked through a window.

  “I have never gotten used to seeing people with half their head blown off,” the highway cop said.

  After killing his wife and two sons, the husband had propped them up against a wall. Neatly. All in a row. The shot they had heard came when the husband stuck the muzzle of the shotgun in his mouth and blew out the back of his head.

  “It was your call, Cole. What do you want to do?”

  “
We’ll call it in, and eventually somebody will come around to pick them up.”

  “The funeral homes are full. I’ve been to all of them. They’ve got bodies stacked all over. It’ll be late tonight, maybe even sometime tomorrow, before these bodies are picked up.” He shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that.”

  “With the temperature as high as it is, in a few hours, these people aren’t going to be pleasant to be around.”

  “Yep. And if they aren’t picked up until sometime late tomorrow, the maggots will be crawling and the blowflies busy.”

  The men walked across the street. The woman who had called the shooting in was still standing there.

  “You go on back in your house, ma’am,” Boyce told her. “Lock your windows and doors. ”Do you own a weapon?“

  “I have my husband’s old double-barrel. Twelve-gauge.”

  “Can you use it?”

  “I sure can.”

  “Is it loaded?” Cole asked.

  “What the hell good is an unloaded gun?” she responded.

  Both men chuckled. Boyce said, “Thank you for calling this in, ma’am.”

  “They’re all dead over there, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, ma’am. All dead.”

  “It’s the devil’s work,” the woman said. “It really is.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned and walked slowly back to her house. Cole and Captain Boyce looked at the other houses close by. They were all dark.

  “You keep that shotgun handy now, you hear?” Cole called to the woman.

  She waved and kept walking.

  Cole called it in to dispatch. The dispatcher said that the sheriff was out on patrol—some trouble out in the county—and added, “twenty-eight, see the man at 1107 Windsor Drive. Possible signal 44.”

  “Stabbing,” Boyce said. “Well, let’s go.”

  But before they could get to their cars, dispatch radioed, “Captain Boyce, 10–19, please.”

  “Let me go see what that’s all about. I’ll catch up with you, Cole.”

  Cole nodded and watched as the trooper drove off, back to the sheriff’s office. He got back in his Bronco and told Katti to find Windsor Drive.

  “I heard the call,” she said. “Windsor Drive is all the way across town. Here.” She showed him the map.

  On the way over, they passed several burning houses. The fire department was spread so thin, all the firemen (most of them volunteers) could do was keep it from spreading to other houses.