Looks like the whole “my friend will set the bomb off” thing isn’t going to protect Sam.
James’ hand started to shake around the detonator. Sam had risked everything to save his life and do the same for Dad. James had thought he’d do the same for him. But as the cultist crept nearer, it became more and more obvious he might actually have to do it. Failing would be too horrific to contemplate. “Sam,” James hissed. “On your right. There’s a man with a gun.”
Sam nodded to James slightly. “One,” he began. “Two. Three.”
James kept his eyes locked on the armed cultist. The big man was close to the front now. People were pulling away to let him pass. They knew what the bastard was going to do. That’d make it all right for him to blow them all to hell.
“Don’t listen to him!” someone called out from amidst the cultists. “How do we know he’s even got a bomb?”
“Four. Five.”
The man was at the front of the crowd now. He was taller than Sam. Wider too. His eyes were cold, cold as ice. Was that Phil, the one Sam and Amber were talking about? He looked ruthless enough.
His hand emerged from the jacket. He definitely had a gun, a shiny black pistol. The weapon rose in his hand, a trajectory that’d bring it to bear on Sam’s head.
“Six.”
“Sam!” James hissed. “Gun!”
“Even if there is a bomb,” someone else shouted. “He will protect us! He always has!”
The gun was almost there. Nobody had left the clearing. More people were edging forward. Fear twisted like a coiling snake in James’ gut. They were pretty obviously going to charge once the armed man pulled the trigger. They’d swarm him and pull him down. Then he’d be lucky if they just beat him to death. More than likely he’d be offered up to that thing right beside Dad.
Sam ducked. The man pulled the trigger. The gunshot barked loud in the gloom. Wood splintered from a tree near where Sam’s head had been.
“James, now!”
James obeyed.
Thunder cracked. It didn’t just crack. It roared like a tornado, consuming every other sound in the sanctuary. Smoke rolled forward to engulf the congregation, but not before Phillip could see bloody flowers bloom on the faces and bodies of the congregants. The harsh stink of explosives rolled over him along with the screams.
He knew the sound. He’d used that weapon before.
“Claymore,” he snarled aloud. “Claymore directional mine!”
Who would dare attack His lair with Claymores? If this was the EPD—he had full faith in the loyalty of the Sheriff’s Office—leaving their jurisdiction to arrogantly challenge Him on His own ground, they’d start out with flash-bangs and gas. They wouldn’t kill immediately. Not even if they had the man in black to spur them on.
Edington. His heart sank. The EPD and the civilians they protected would find out soon that their handguns, their rifles, and even that armored personnel carrier with the .50 cal they bought with that damned federal anti-drug money were nothing compared to Him. He was older than the white men, older than the red men, perhaps even older than men, period. He would laugh at their attempts to destroy Him, laugh as He killed them all and made Edington like Sodom and Gomorrah. Even if the stranger promised them federal assistance, his promises were a broken staff that would wound any foolish enough to lean on them.
Phillip’s eyes swept the sanctuary now profaned with the blood and steaming guts of his followers. An all-too-familiar smell of shit from bellies blown open mingled with the sulfurous stink of spent explosives. Even now, decades after he’d first gone to war, the smell could still turn his stomach. Occasional moans touched his ears. No one rose from the red massacre.
“No,” he whispered. The congregation was gone. All dead, or soon to be. All dead except for him.
His gaze turned to the man on the table. His chest still rose and fell. His head turned away, his eyes no doubt drinking the scene of slaughter. The carpetbagger had seen the elephant. A pity he’d die soon anyway.
Phillip would speak to the police when they came. He’d warn them of their sin and then summon Him. The carpetbagger’s death—and the death of the stranger if he was with them—would seal the EPD to Him, as the deaths of slaves had sealed the first white congregants to Him hundreds of years ago.
The congregation would go on. Edington would go on.
A wave of gray smoke consumed the sanctuary, reaching back toward Sam and James like a giant clutching hand. James looked away, but he couldn’t ignore the sounds of agony from the clearing. He trembled, stomach boiling. If he’d eaten anything heavier than that ice cream he’d had with Amber, he’d have puked by now. He prayed the bodies of the cultists had shielded Dad from the waves of ball bearings blasting out of the Claymore like an enormous shotgun.
James looked down at the detonator in his hands. He’d done it. He’d just killed God knows how many people. This wasn’t Call of Duty. This wasn’t HALO. This wasn’t even paintball with its bruises. This was real. His face grew hot with shame. Tears began building in his eyes.
He blinked back the tears. His trembling hand clenched into a fist around the detonator. This was war. The monster they worshiped had attacked him and murdered Bill. The cultists had attacked his family. The abomination they worshiped had no doubt been killing people for centuries. And now, finally, somebody was striking back. A grin split his face.
He set the detonator on the ground and picked up the shotgun. The smoke was starting to clear, rising up into the choking canopy and revealing the carnage the Claymore had left behind.
Where there’d once been living men and women now were only heaps of mangled bodies. The closer to the mine, the more the bodies looked like ground beef at the grocery store. Blood pooled on the dark earth amidst the mounds of mutilated flesh. The air was thick with the smell of massacre, of coppery blood and strangely enough, shit. His stomach surged into his mouth. He swallowed vomit tasting of mingled chocolate and peanut butter before he could make a spectacle of himself.
James looked beyond the field of slaughter to where the picnic table had been. Where was it? Where was Dad?
He soon had his answer. The picnic table was still there. A naked white body was splayed across it. Although James couldn’t be sure, the hair color and height looked a lot like Dad. Though bloodied bodies lay on the ground within feet of the picnic table, the sacrificial victim was unmarred.
Oh thank you God.
James leaped up. “Wait!” Sam shouted. But James was already running through the vegetation that had sheltered them from the backblast, heedless of the danger of any armed survivor, heedless of the squishing of his shoes in the bloodied earth or the opened guts of the cultists.
Rage boiled deep inside Phillip as the tall youth with dark hair and freckles rushed across the clearing. He had bandages over his left cheek. It was the boy! Phillip looked for the stranger in the dark suit, but he was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t possible. How had the boy who’d fled Him managed to do this?
Phillip’s hand fell to his service pistol. He would punish the brat for this insolence, punish him like his foolish parents who no doubt wanted to be his “friend” never had. His hand trembled with anger around the weapon’s pebbled grip.
He didn’t draw, even though he could probably hit the boy from where he was. The little carpetbagger shit had to have help, even if it wasn’t the EPD. Perhaps the stranger in black had put him up to this. Phillip kept his eye on the boy and waited for whoever helped the little bastard to reveal themselves.
Warm wetness swallowed James’ foot. He looked down. He’d stepped into the open guts of Deputy Bowie, the one who’d tried to convince him Bill had taken a knife to his face. The stink of shit rose around him. The huge man moaned.
“Holy fuck!” James screamed. He jumped nearly a foot. Something warm against his ankle came with him. The man screamed this time. It was only when he’d gotten both feet back on the wet ground that he saw he’d brought a loop of the man’s inte
stine with him. James screamed again and again, uncaring of how he looked, yanking the intestine still further. The deputy’s screams echoed his own. James finally kicked his foot free.
Then he stumbled and spewed his partially-digested chocolate-peanut butter ice cream over the wet ground. He imagined Sam looking on with disapproval. He was glad Amber wasn’t there to see him look like a wimp.
He dragged himself to his feet. Time to be strong. For Dad. “Dad!” James shouted. “DAD!”
His father’s head snapped in his direction. “James?” he asked. “James, what are you doing here? Did they take you too? Did they bring you here?”
“No! I’ve come to save you.” He ran, ignoring the wet warmth clinging to his ankle and the last bodies squishing beneath his feet.
He stopped short. Dad was tied down to the picnic table, and James didn’t have anything to cut with. And he was suddenly much more aware of his father’s nudity.
I really, really don’t want to see Dad’s junk.
Studiously avoiding his father’s groin as much as he could, James looked Dad over. A few small wounds marred him, but it looked like the cultists had taken the brunt of the Claymore.
Good. Bastards deserved it.
James stepped forward. Even without his pocketknife, how hard could it be to untie the leather straps? Once he got one arm free, Dad could help him. They’d be done pretty darn quick, and then they could get the hell out of there.
“Halt!” a hard voice snarled. “Stop right there!” James’ head snapped in the direction of the sound.
A robed man ran out of the woods, out from under trees that had crept up to an ancient, heavy bell. Iron-gray hair cut close to his skull peeked out from under his hood. Gray eyes alight with rage focused on James. And so was the shiny black pistol in his hands.
“You,” he spat. “You thought you’d pulled a fast one, didn’t you?”
James still had the shotgun, but there was no way he could raise it before the man fired. His only hope was to keep the man talking so Sam could blow the bastard’s head off.
“Yeah,” James declared, hoping the man couldn’t detect the trembling in his voice. “Yeah, I did. I’m the one who just wiped your little cult off the map.” James swallowed. “That was me. I was the one who pressed the big red button. I killed all of you…you inbred cocksuckers. Probably improved the gene pool around here.”
The cult leader’s lips peeled back from his white teeth. “James,” Dad warned.
“Mind your manners, boy,” the cult leader snarled. He glared at James. “How the hell did you manage this?” He gestured at the carnage all around. “You city kids don’t know how to do jack shit. You stay inside all day because you’ve got no yards and playing in the street’s too dangerous—”
“He wasn’t alone, Phil,” Sam interrupted. Both James’ and Phil’s heads snapped toward the far edge of the clearing. Sam came walking toward them, red blood soaking his jeans up to his knees. The AR-15 was in his hands. He had a pair of camouflage pants balled up under his arm.
Shock, anger, and more than a little fear flooded Phil’s face. “Sam Dixon, you goddamn traitor! It had to be you! How else could this brat get hold of a fucking Claymore?”
James nearly jumped. How did the cult leader know they’d used Claymores? If he could figure that out, anybody coming on the scene later would. He and Sam had planned to rescue Dad but hadn’t really thought about what would come next. Especially with how tight the cult was with the Sheriff’s Office. They’d go right to the Guard armory, and that’d lead them straight to Sam.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Yeah, it was me. You said all this was for the protection of Edington, but all you’ve been doing is trying to feed innocent folk to a monster!”
“Don’t call Him that!” Phil snarled back. “Don’t you dare!”
“That’s what He is, ain’t He?” Sam challenged. “God doesn’t need human meat to live.” He drew a breath. “That thing’s no god. Don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s not Him. Not at all.”
Phil’s gun hand whipped away from James. Sam snapped up the AR-15.
Amber looked over her shoulder toward the road that brought them to the cult’s inner sanctum for the third or fourth time since the Claymore’s roar and the butchered cultists’ screams savaged her eardrums. Still, nobody came from the entrance to the tree farm. Her head snapped back toward the path leading into the trees. James and Sam were off confronting only God knew what to save James’ dad from the gang of murderers who’d gone unpunished for far too long and she was out here gathering moss.
Somebody’s got to watch the car, she told herself. They might need to get away in a hurry. If they rescued James’ father but couldn’t escape the cult’s “sanctuary,” whatever cultists remained might overwhelm them. And then there was the monstrosity they worshiped. A lump gathered in her throat. The uncle she’d never met had died by inches, slowly devoured by something terrible. Her father had never told her much, but her imagination could fill in the details. Something huge and black and brimming with eyes and arms and teeth. The bastards no doubt made a production of it, with torches and drums like the heathen savages they were underneath their polite exteriors.
She shook her head. James and Sam needed her to keep a clear head. The bastards by the front gate couldn’t be allowed anywhere near the car. And she had a damn good idea of what they’d do to her for daring to challenge them—before they fed her to the monster like they did her uncle.
She looked back at the road leading out of the tree farm. Nothing moved. There wasn’t even the bouncing, crumpling sound of wheels on gravel. Nobody was coming. She returned her attention to the path leading between the two towering evil statues. Their multitude of azure eyes regarded her like a big fish might regard a little one.
She shook her head again. She wasn’t some foolish woman who’d lose her head when left alone. She had a job, and she was going to do it, fears be damned. James and Sam were fine. There hadn’t been any noise since the single gunshot and the Claymore’s explosion. Perhaps they’d killed all of the cultists at once. The thought brought a most unladylike grin to her face. The only ones left to fear were those yahoos by the gate.
Gunshots cracked through the trees. Amber snapped her shotgun to her shoulder, looking down the length of the barrel like she was tracking a turkey by the reservoir. She stepped toward the path leading into the cult’s inner sanctum but quickly stopped herself.
If James and Sam still lived, they’d need her to make sure they could get the hell out of there.
The gunshots overlapped, cracking like whips in James’ ears. Sam toppled backward. Phil staggered like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. A flower of red blood bloomed on his right shoulder, turning his gray robes black as it spread. But he was still up and still in control of his weapon
Oh shit!
James had only one chance. He raised the shotgun as fast as he could. “Lights out,” he snarled, hoping he sounded scary and not about to shit himself.
Phil’s gun swung toward James. James squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger. The shotgun kicked against his shoulder like one of the tougher kids he’d sparred with at Choi Kwong Do. The blast bit painfully loud in his ears. The recoil sent him staggering, but it’d done worse to the cult leader.
Phil’s face above the nose was gone. Gray brain matter decorated the carved black wood holding up the iron bell. Chunks of white skull slid down the post made slick with blood and brain, the ones the shot hadn’t sunk into the wooden flesh like daggers. He could see the shiny inner surface of what was left of the man’s skull. The shot had quite literally blown the cult leader’s brains out.
The more he stared at his ghoulish handiwork, the more his hands shook. The weight of what he’d done pressed down on him. He’d just killed God knew how many people with a land mine and then went and shot a man. James looked behind him at the mangled corpses littering the clearing and quickly looked away, only for his eyes to fall back o
n the corpse of the cult leader.
“James,” a pain-ridden voice said. “James, listen to me.” James’ head snapped up, eyes bulging. Sam had managed to pull himself onto his knees. “We’ve got to get your pa out of here.”
How was he up and moving? The way he fell, he must’ve been shot square in the chest. Was he wearing body armor? If he was, did he have another set he could have shared? James shook his head. No time to wonder about that. They had to get Dad out of there before the Edington cops showed up. If they were gone and the cops found the field of slaughter, they’d have a chance. It didn’t look like there were any living witnesses.
Sam pulled himself up, grimacing all the while. He stumbled forward, catching himself on the table. “You get his hands. I’ll get his feet.”
James stepped around Sam. His fingers leaped to the leather ropes crucifying Dad against the wood. He tugged at the bonds. The leather was wet. Untying him would be a pain in the ass.
After what felt like an eternity of tugging and scrabbling, he managed to pull one strand out of the knot. Slowly, too slowly, he drew the strand free. After that, it was easy to untie the rest. Dad’s hand flew to the other rope binding his wrist. A moment later Sam got one foot free.
“Did they ring the bell?” Sam demanded as Dad rose to his feet. “Did they ring the bell?”
“No,” Dad said. “Not that I can remember.”
“Good. If they didn’t, we might still have some time. We’ve got to get the hell out of here. The congregants at the front of the farm might’ve heard the Claymore go off. They’re probably on their way in now. We’d best not be here when they get there.”
James heard everything Sam said, but his attention was on the pond. The water was moving. He could see the faintest glow of azure light. It was getting brighter.
James’ grip tightened on the shotgun, but that didn’t stop his hands from trembling. Bile started rising into his throat, even though there couldn’t possibly anything left in it.
The Thing in the Woods Page 15