Emily looked at Alice in the near darkness of the closet. “You ready?”
“Give it hell, Emily.”
Emily chuckled and cracked the door.
* * *
Herman and Frank found Emily Ramsey’s car. It was parked by the side of the road about a half mile from the truck terminal. They checked it out and discovered no signs of foul play.
“Let’s drive up the road a piece before calling this in,” Frank suggested. “Might find the kids’ car.”
“You’re driving.”
Just around the curve, they found a car registered to Clyde Armstrong. They radioed both finds in.
“Stay right where you are,” Dan said. “I’ll be joining you shortly. ETA five minutes.” Dan looked at his family. “Get in the house and stay put. Don’t come outside for any reason. And that is not a request.”
Vonne smiled at him. “You’re still a sexist pig, old man.”
“Of course,” Dan returned the smile.
The girls laughed.
Vonne waved at him. “Get outta here! And be careful.”
Rolling toward the cars of the missing women and teenagers, Taylor said, “I wonder if Lamotta really heard that call?”
“I doubt it. I think he’s got a pipeline in my office. But I don’t know who it is. Anyway, we’ll know if he’s monitoring our tach frequency when we get to the site.”
“I wish I knew how all this was going to end.”
Dan glanced at him. “Do you, Tay? Really?”
Captain Taylor crossed himself and remained silent.
* * *
The old shack was empty. Except for stinking piles of cat crap that littered the floor. Emily cautiously opened the door a tad wider and looked out, her pistol in her right hand. Emily pushed the door open wider still. Nothing came leaping and snarling and howling at them. The only sound was the seemingly loud beating of the women’s hearts.
Emily straightened up, her knee joints cracking as she did so. She carefully and thoroughly inspected the room. No cats. Still standing in the closet door, she looked out through the glassless windows. No cats could be seen. But as the wind changed, it brought with it a very foul odor. The stench, somehow familiar to Emily, wrinkled her nose as it assaulted her nostrils.
“Phew, Emily,” Alice said. “What is that smell?”
“I don’t know. But it’s somehow familiar to me. I ...” Then it came to her. Old blood and rotting flesh. She didn’t mention that to Alice. But she wondered where the odor was coming from, and the source of it.
Emily stepped out into the dirty, cobwebby room. She inspected the other two rooms of the shack. No cats.
Alice turned as a movement caught her peripheral vision, right side. She stared in disbelief. Her heart hammered. “Alice?” she whispered. “Look toward your right, out that window,” she pointed. “And tell me what you see.”
Alice looked. Sucked in her breath. She stared in horror. “That’s ... oh, my God! That’s the Moore girl.” Her voice was just audible.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” Emily blinked. The figure would not go away.
“I’m going to close my eyes,” Alice said. “And when I open, them, that . . . thing is going to be gone. I just know it.”
She closed her eyes. Opened them. Denise stood not far from the shack.
Both women stood in shock, staring out into the clearing.
A word drifted to the women. But neither could make it out.
“Did you say something, Emily?”
“No. I thought it was you. It was you, wasn’t it, Alice?”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Calm down. We’re hallucinating, that’s all. Let’s close our eyes and take several deep breaths.”
That done, the women opened their eyes. Denise was closer to the shack.
“NoNoNoNoNoNo!” Alice said. “This is not possible.”
The naked, torn, ghostly pale body of Denise gleamed brightly in the sun. She stood in the clearing, looking at the shack, a cat sitting on the ground beside her. She slowly lifted one arm and motioned at the shack. She spoke, the words very clear now.
“Come. Come. Come with me.”
Alice hit the floor.
6
“No signs of foul play?” Dan asked.
“No, sir,” Herman said. “Nothing to indicate that at all.”
“All right. Both of you take your handy-talkies. Check them out. Get your shotguns. Stuff your pockets full of extra shells. I don’t know what in the hell we’re going up against here.”
“Hell might be an apt choice of words,” Taylor said.
Chuck pulled up, Susan in the car behind them. They were followed by the other “vacationing” Virginia state troopers. The troopers, including Langway, were all dressed in civvies.
Dan looked around him. Curious, he thought. No birds singing. No sign of any birds. The pastures and woods were still. Ominously so.
Taylor’s eyes touched Dan’s. “I just flat don’t like it,” the trooper said.
“I don’t either.”
“It’s your ballpark, Dan,” Taylor said. “We’re just visiting. You call the shots.”
“We’ll sweep this area,” he said, waving his hand. “No more than fifty to seventy-five yards apart. Weapons at combat ready. No heroics, people. Like I said, we don’t know what we’re up against. Creatures, monsters, cats—you name it.”
“And The Blob!” Trooper Hawkes said.
Taylor gave the young patrolman a look guaranteed to freeze snowballs in the desert.
“A small attempt at humor, Captain,” Hawkes said.
“Rodney Dangerfield doesn’t have a thing to worry about,” Taylor responded.
Hawkes looked hurt.
The wind freshened a bit, bringing with it a foul stench.
“Yukk!” Susan said. “What is that?”
“I came up on a pile of thawed bodies one time in Korea,” Taylor said. “Frozen stiff during the winter, thawed out in the spring. Smelled something like that.”
“Korea, huh?” Hawkes said, his face containing nothing but pure innocence. “I thought you fought in the First World War?”
Taylor stepped toward him. Hawkes trotted away, calling over his shoulder. “I’ll take the far side. Waaaay over there!”
Taylor had to smile. He could remember being young and full of spunk.
“Move out,” Dan said. “Slow and easy.”
* * *
This time, Alice wasn’t faking it. She was out cold. Emily took what was left of the water and bathed the woman’s face, all the while trying to keep one eye on the pale form of Denise. When she looked up from the reclining Alice, Denise and the cat had disappeared.
She got Alice awake and sitting up. She wiped the damp cloth over the woman’s face. “Can you get up, Alice? We’ve got to get out of here.”
Alice got her eyes in focus. “Denise Moore is dead! That could not have been her. Damnit, Emily, it couldn’t have been.”
“But it was.” Emily helped the woman to her feet. “We both saw her. We both couldn’t have imagined that. Come on.”
Together, Emily leading the way, the women stepped out of the house onto the rotting porch of the shack. Both of them looked warily around for cats.
“That odor has changed,” Alice observed.
“You’re smelling yourself. You landed in cat shit.”
“Gross! I don’t see any of the little bastards. Do you?”
“No. But I’m wondering if they see us.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Let’s go, Alice. Stay close to me.”
“Don’t you worry about that.”
Chuck was the first to spot the women, slipping through the thin scrub timber. He called to them. Waved at them. They practically knocked him down getting to him.
Dan and the others stood for a full two minutes, listening to Alice babble about the attack, being pursued by thousands of cats, the mangled bodies of t
he teenagers, their taking refuge in a smelly old shack, and finally, the sighting of Denise.
They couldn’t make sense out of anything she said.
Emily said, “Alice, please, slow down for a minute, will you?”
“Mrs. Ramsey,” Chuck said, showing his understanding of Virginia’s female aristocracy ... so-called. “Perhaps you’d like to sit in my car and rest for a few moments? I’ll take down your report when you feel like it.”
She looked at the chief deputy like Elaine of Astolat must have looked at Launcelot. “Oh, thank you!” She was gushing again. “Mr? ...”
“Klevan, ma’am.” Chuck blushed. “Chief Deputy Klevan.” He held out his arm and she took it. He led her off toward the parked cars.
“What a pair,” Hawkes said.
“Alice is really a good person,” Emily said. “She’s just pretentious a lot of the time.”
“What happened, Emily?” Dan asked.
Emily told her story with all the succinctness and perception of a good O.R. nurse. When she finished, the cops stood and stared at her.
Taylor cleared his throat. “You really saw the Moore girl, Mrs. Harrison? Alive?”
“No, sir. I don’t believe she was alive. Not as we know the word.”
For once, Hawkes didn’t have anything cute to say. He looked a little pale.
“You mind explaining that?” Taylor said.
“Some kook had really done a number on the girl. She had been literally sewn back together. It looked like strange designs had been cut into her body. Nobody could survive that. And I’ve seen people who had bled to death. She looked just like that. Her flesh was pale white; almost tinted a light blue. She was naked. She called to us, but at first it was in a language I couldn’t understand. When she came closer, I could see the stitching in her flesh. When she again spoke, motioning to us, it was in English. She had a cat with her. They disappeared into a little patch of woods.”
Hawkes was definitely pale. He looked nervously around him.
Taylor shook his head and sighed.
“And the bodies of the kids?” Dan asked.
“Let me get my bearings.” Emily looked around her, spotting the high tension wires, looking for landmarks. “Right over there,” she said, pointing.
“Thank you, Mrs. Harrison,” Dan said. “Frank, escort Mrs. Harrison back to the cars and stay with her, please.”
“Sheriff?” Emily said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Two things, please. First, I want to know what is going on in this county. Secondly, you’d better radio in for some body bags. There isn’t much left of those kids.”
“Mrs. Harrison,” Dan said. “I think it’s time for everyone in this county to be informed as to what is going on.”
“I don’t,” the familiar voice came from behind the line of cops.
* * *
Mille and Kenny had left the car parked by the side of a gravel road and now stood at the edge of the lovely, peaceful-appearing meadow, the open field bordered on three sides by trees.
“What are we looking for, Mille?” Kenny did not like the great outdoors.
“I don’t know. Nothing, in particular. I just need to walk around out in the fresh air. Clear my head and sort out some things.”
“We’re gonna have to be careful on this one, Mille,” Kenny warned. “I think the sheriff meant it when he told us about that Lamotta creep.”
“Monsters, Kenny?” she said, looking at him. “Creatures? Mummy-men? Killer house cats. A two thousand year old little girl and her cat? Think about it. Is the sheriff having a big laugh at our expense?”
“I thought about that first, Mille. I thought you were the one with no doubts.”
“That doesn’t answer the question. But, yeah. I’m having some doubts. Lots of them.”
A pickup truck drove by, stopped, and backed up. A man’s friendly face looked out at the pair. “Haven’t you young folks heard about the monsters?” he asked with a grin. “It ain’t safe to be out and about with them creatures roamin’.”
“We haven’t heard that one, mister,” Mille said, straight-faced lying. “But I gather you don’t think there’s much truth in the stories?”
The man laughed, a good, strong, jolly type of laugh. “Young lady, I quit believin’ in spooks a long time ago.” He waved at them. “Ya’ll take care now, you hear? And don’t scare my cattle in that field.”
“We won’t,” Kenny assured them.
He drove on down the gravel road and turned off on a dirt road, leading away from the pair. A mile down that road, he stopped, staring but not believing his eyes.
“Nice fellow,” Kenny said. “He didn’t even look twice at my hair.”
“Are you getting self-conscious about your hair, Kenny?”
“I guess so. Sort of.”
They started walking.
“Well, the sheriff’s story seems to be circulating, and obviously, not many people are buying it. I can sure see why.”
For once in his young life, Kenny stood squarely beside the law. “I don’t know, Mille. I believe the man. I don’t think the guy knows how to lie.”
They walked across the small pasture, full of early summer flowers and an occasional pile of cow dung. It was the cow droppings that masked that other odor wafting through the air.
And the warm, whispering winds also covered the sounds of footsteps slipping closer to the reporter and the investigator. Mille turned around in the pasture, some sense of warning alerting her. She looked around. She could see nothing out of the ordinary.
“What’s wrong, Mille?”
“Nothing, I guess. I just felt like someone was watching us. I guess I’m getting spooky. It was my imagination, that’s all.”
“Sure. That’s ... Ooww!” Kenny spun around, his face contorted from pain.
A dart stuck out of his right buttock.
“Jesus, Mille. I’ve been darted.”
“That’s a tranquilizer dart, Kenny. Someone is ...” A sharp pain in Mille’s hip cut off her words. She jerked and looked down. A dart stuck out of her hip. “Goddamnit!” she said. “What’s going on?”
Within seconds, both Mille and Kenny slumped to the ground, no longer able to control leg movement. They jerked spasmodically, thrashing on the cool ground. Finally, they lay still.
They could hear voices, but could not make out who was talking. A fine mist seemed to cover their open eyes, fogging vision, dulling the mind.
“Pull the van around on that dirt road close to the tree line,” a voice said. “Over there. We’ll carry them from here. Hurry! Take them to the terminal. They can cool their heels in lock-up. That’ll get them out of our business. Move it.”
Kenny and Mille slipped into unconsciousness.
* * *
Dan slowly led the way in the direction Emily had pointed out. The cops were spread out, weapons at the ready. They moved slowly and carefully through the meadows and thin timber and brush. Lou Lamotta walked by Dan’s side. He carried an M-16.
“You’re just determined to blow the lid off this thing, aren’t you, Sheriff?” Lou asked.
“Lamotta ...” Dan started to argue with the man, then realized it was futile. Lou Lamotta was a right-wing fanatic. Country came first, no matter if he had to kill off the entire U.S. population to save it. Dan knew then, that moment, with a veteran’s cop’s insight, that Lamotta was truly insane.
“Wouldn’t you sacrifice one county to save the whole country, Sheriff?” Lamotta pressed.
“I don’t want to argue about it, Lamotta,” Dan said wearily. “You won’t change. But I’ll tell you this: you’re nuts! ”
Lamotta laughed. “Oh, I am, Sheriff. I don’t deny it. I’m mad as a hatter. Certifiably insane. But I know how to deal with it. That’s the only reason I’m not in some lockdown.”
Taylor looked at the man and muttered an obscenity under his breath.
The smell reached them, stronger. A thick, almost tangible odor of death. F
ifty steps more and they stood on the fringe of the slaughter-site. The cops stood looking on in shock and disgust; Lou lifted his handy-talkie and called in to his base. He gave their location and told his people to get moving.
Then, to the shock of the others, Lou began laughing.
He waved the cops back and squatted down, chuckling as he inspected the blood and gore and young death. “Cats,” he said. “A bunch of goddamn house cats did this. Great God! If we could learn how to control their actions, just think what a weapon this nation could have. Right, Sheriff?”
Dan knew the OSS agent was putting the needle to him. He looked at Lou and shook his head in disgust.
Lou laughed at him.
Taylor spat on the ground and walked away from Lou, again muttering obscenities under his breath.
Langway seriously contemplated shooting the maniac. He glared at Lou, gripping his shotgun so hard his knuckles turned white from strain.
“Steady, Sarge,” Hawkes said softly. “You’re our leader, remember?”
“Old blood and rotting human meat,” Lou said, talking to himself. “That’s what the Harrison broad said she smelled. But this just smells like excrement. So where did she smell it? And does it have anything to do with the cats’ behavior?” He looked up at Dan.
“I have no idea. But do I have your permission to continue my investigation, O Great OSS Man?”
Lou laughed and rose to his feet just as a man walked up to the site. Dodge.
“Where the hell have you been?” Lou snapped at him.
Dodge pointed a finger at him. “Cool it, Lamotta! I don’t take all my orders from you—remember? I’ve been out of town.”
“Doing what?” Lou demanded.
“None of your business.”
“There will be a report written about your attitude, Dodge.”
“Good. Dandy. You do that, Lamotta.”
“My investigation, Lamotta?” Dan repeated.
“Yeah, yeah, Sheriff,” Lou said impatiently, waving his hand. “Run along and play detective. And take that jerk,” he looked at Dodge, “with you. Just stay the hell out of my peoples’ way and remember to keep your mouth shut after you leave here.” His eyes hardened and his smile changed to more of a snarl. “I’ve tried to be friends, Sheriff; tried to apologize for coming on so hard. You and your family tossed it back in my face. You got an attitude problem, buddy-boy. But I think I’ve found a way to circle around that and keep your mouth shut. You’re so super civic-minded; concerned with the public’s welfare and all that.” He glanced at his watch. “So I guess it’s time to get hard. I’ve had some of my people—I pulled a few more in-grab Ms. Smith and that freaky little hippie punk with her. They’ll be my, ah, guests for the duration, buddy-boy. Now you get cute with me again, hotshot, and Ms. Smith and that fruit-pie get hurt-bad-and then, buddy-boy, I start on some local people. You copy all that, Sheriff?”
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