“You saw the so-called ’normal’ people the cops rounded up. None of my old high school buddies were among the bunch. The only one I know for sure is dead is Parnell.”
“The rest of them?”
“Hiding. And they’ll be looking for us.”
He clicked on the radio. The announcer was just getting into the news. “Details are still sketchy, but it appears that federal, state, and local police have smashed a satanic ring in the town of Victory, Missouri. The cult, which at this reporting seems to have involved most of the residents of the town, were deeply involved in the filming and distribution of porn films. Some of them died a violent death. Hundreds of people, of all ages, rather than face arrest, apparently committed suicide. Emergency medical teams from all over the state, including National Guard personnel, have converged on the area in an effort to prevent disease from spreading from the hundreds of dead. We’ll be back with the hog market report right after this message from Right Flush, the laxative you can live with.”
Jay clicked off the radio. He glanced at Shari; a peculiar light in her eyes. One that Jay had seen too many times before not to know what it meant.
“Where do you want to go, Shari?”
“I don’t care, Jay. Just as long as I’m with you.”
He saw the flash of the knife out of the corner of his eye. He pulled off the road, slamming on the brakes, the sudden braking throwing the young woman against the dashboard. Jay hit her as hard as he could with his right fist, the blow connecting squarely on the side of her jaw. Wriggling around on the seat, Jay kicked her twice in the head with the heel of his shoe.
He checked his rearview. Traffic was flowing normally; no one seemed to be taking any interest in the car pulled over on the shoulder. Jay looked down. Blood was beginning to ooze out of Shari’s ears and nose. The side of her head was pushed inward. Jay tied a handkerchief around her head to catch the blood, then packed tissues around that to catch any overflow.
He pulled out. After a few miles, he cut east and crossed the Mississippi River, then headed north. On a lonely stretch of Highway 3, in Illinois, he dumped her body in a deep ditch. He returned the car to the St. Louis airport, waited around for an hour, and then rented another car from a different agency.
He spent two days in the city before he found a pawn shop that would sell him a couple of pistols without following legal procedures. He bought two hundred rounds of ammunition for the weapons and holsters. One side holster, one shoulder holster. His left hand was practically useless; he could not handle a shotgun.
He bought several legal pads and made out his will. He left everything to various charitable organizations. Mailed the will to a friend in New York.
He bought a four-wheel-drive vehicle and camping supplies. Then he went to see a doctor.
The doctor advised him to check into a hospital and have surgery done, immediately.
“Just patch it up the best you can,” Jay told him.
Jay pulled out at dawn. He took a wandering route, first the Interstate west to Jefferson City, then 54 down to a county road that cut back south and east.
He came up on Victory from the south.
He camped just off a county road, a gravel road, and fixed a lonely meal.
At dawn, he was walking toward Victory, cutting through woods and fields he had not seen since a youth.
But he knew where he would find Piper and Kelly and Jenny. Not only them, but the entire gang of his old high school buddies. He was reasonably certain he’d find them all there.
From a patch of woods about five hundred meters from the east side of town, Jay studied the situation through binoculars he’d bought in the pawn shop. National Guard troops and cops were guarding the highways and streets leading in and out of the town. But that was all right; Jay wasn’t going into Victory.
Jay stayed low to the ground, working his way along in ditches whenever possible and staying in timber and in the weed-grown fields. Once, a state police helicopter almost caught him out in the open. But Jay managed to find concealment just in time to avoid being spotted.
He stopped often to rest and to view the town through binoculars. Twice, he spotted Colonel Martin talking with some of the cops and guardsmen.
And as he drew nearer to his objective, it was as he thought it would be.
The landfill, the town’s garbage dump, was not being guarded.
As he stopped to eat a can of beans and munch on crackers and drink from his canteen, Jay would pause and study the landfill through his binoculars.
Then he spotted movement. Very quick furtive movement. He sharpened the focus on his field glasses. There he was. Just a quick glimpse, to be sure, but Jay had him spotted. The Old One. The old, old man. And he appeared very weak, walking with the aid of a cane.
And Jay was curious about that. If he was some sort of god, why would he need a cane? Does the devil use a cane? No, no, this was not the devil; just one of his minions. Supernatural he might be, but he would age as time rolled relentlessly on. The evil had stopped; there was nothing left for the old bastard to feed on. So he was weaker.
Jay spotted several kids, one of them Kelly, and then they just vanished. But that was easy to figure: holes in the ground; tunnels burrowed in the landfill.
With his knife, also purchased in St. Louis, Jay sharpened one end of a stick, about three and a half feet long, paring the point as sharp as he could. He tucked the stick between his web belt and his trousers. Maybe he’d seen too many movies and read too many books; he didn’t know. But he had a hunch that no matter how many times he might be able to shoot that old one, bullets would not kill it.
But if everything he’d ever read was correct, this stake just might do it.
Jay crawled closer, moving as stealthily as he knew how. He knew they must have guards and lookouts somewhere, but so far he’d been unable to spot them.
Then he saw why he’d been unable to spot any guards.
A tiny figure popped up not two feet from him. A tiny little man in a stained and garbage-stinking doctor’s outfit. Jay eased the sharpened stake out of his belt and speared the little man.
He pulled the jerking little figure to him and stared down at him. The little man spat at him, then died.
He worked the bloody little figure off the stake and tossed it to one side. He felt no emotion; just a dead coldness.
He slipped behind a rusted and battered old refrigerator and paused for a moment, looking around him.
He felt something jabbing at his ankle. Looking down, he saw Maggie Watson trying to stick him with a long needle; but she did not have the strength to drive the needle through the leather of his boots.
He stomped her flat under the sole of his boot. She screamed her way into death.
Looking around him, knowing that scream would be heard, Jay cocked his pistol.
Jay saw one of the boys who ran with Gibson’s gang stick his head out of a hole in the ground. Jay shot him in the head.
Sensing someone behind him, Jay turned, that movement saving his life. The machete struck him on the upper left arm, slicing through to the bone. Through a haze of white-hot pain, Jay shot the savage-eyed little girl.
He could hear sirens in the distance. “God,” he prayed. “Please give me the strength to finish this.”
Jenny’s little gang of boys and girls ran toward him. He stood up and picked his shots carefully, squeezing them off with deadly accuracy.
The sirens were getting closer.
Piper lunged out of the ground, charging him. A far cry from the beautiful model she had once been, she was haggard and filthy, stinking and savage looking.
Switching pistols, Jay put two rounds into her chest.
His left arm was hanging bloody and useless by his side.
Jenny was out of the ground and running. Jay, calmly, with no emotion, shot the child in the back. She screamed and pitched forward on her face.
Highway patrol cars and county sheriffs’ cars were bouncing and squall
ing across the rutted landfill.
Jay ran behind a mound of dirt and reloaded both pistols.
And there was his darling little Kelly, helping that old creature out of the ground.
“Run, girl, save yourself,” he heard himself saying.
Jay triggered off two quick shots at Kelly, missing both times. He ran toward the Old One, dropping his guns and jerking the stake out of his belt.
“Oh, please help us!” Kelly shouted to a deputy. “It’s Daddy, and he’s gone crazy. He’s killing everybody. We’ve been held prisoner underground. The old man is my friend. Please don’t let Daddy hurt him.”
“Clute! Mr. Clute! Stop!” the deputy yelled.
Jay ran on.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Colonel Martin’s voice, amplified over his outside speaker, reached Jay. “Goddammit, Jay! Halt, you silly fool!”
The deputy and a trooper fired. Jay felt a great numbing pain in his chest as he was falling. He hit the dirt hard. But he held onto the stake.
“Hold your fire!” Martin screamed.
Jay crawled to his knees and stumbled over to the old man, lifting the stake.
Jay drove the stake into the old man’s chest with the last of his strength. Darkness took him winging.
Colonel Martin had reached Kelly and had a firm grip on her arm. They all gathered around Jay and the old man.
But there was only Jay, bloody, still holding onto the stake. All that was left of the old man was a few decaying bones and stinking rags of clothing.
“Oh, how horrible!” Kelly cried, throwing her arms around Colonel Martin’s waist.
The colonel mightily resisted an impulse to break her pretty little neck.
12
Martin had ordered Kelly placed in the back of a unit. In the cage. He assigned four troopers to guard her. An ambulance had taken Jay away to a hospital; not the hospital in Victory.
“Find every hold you can and drop tear gas down it. Flush whatever is down there . . . out!”
“What do we do with them when they’re out?” a trooper asked.
Martin just looked at him and walked off. He got into his unit and told the troopers, “I’ll be questioning the girl at the CP.”
“That was so horrible back there!” Kelly said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I’ll probably never forget that sight.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Is my daddy going to be all right?”
“I don’t know. He was hit twice; in the stomach and chest. Maybe.”
“You want to make it, Colonel?” Kelly whispered, licking her lips.
“You’re disgusting!”
She laughed at him, her laughter dark with evil that was as old as the ages.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
She laughed at him. “You wanna bet?”
* * *
They were found about an hour later, by a sheriffs deputy. Colonel Martin had stuck his service revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The girl, still in the cage, was hysterical.
“He just said he couldn’t take it anymore!” Kelly squalled. “He just stopped the car and ... and . . .” She began crying.
“Poor kid,” a trooper said. “She’s sure been through hell, hasn’t she?”
“Hell pretty well summed it up,” a deputy agreed.
He was much closer to the truth than he would ever realize.
13
“I believe that is the sweetest kid I have ever seen,” a nurse observed.
“And so totally devoted to her father.”
“Her mother kidnapped her, you know. Part of that cult over at Victory. The father found her and had to kill the mother. Right before her eyes. But he saved her. The police shot him by accident.”
“Isn’t that what they always say, the trigger-happy cops!”
“I heard that. Well, this is one story that’s going to have a happy ending.”
“What do you mean?”
“The RN just told me he’s being taken off the critical list. He’s going to make it.”
* * *
Get well, Daddy, Kelly thought, sitting by Jay’s bed. Get all better again. I have years to work on you. And someday, I’ll have your baby. I’m going to be so beautiful you’ll never be able to resist me. And then the three of us will move back to Victory. Mother was stupid, anyway. You did us all a favor by killing her.
The nurse came in and hugged Kelly. “I just heard the news, Kelly. I’m so happy for you.”
“Thank you,” Kelly said, smiling sweetly. “I’m going to take real good care of Daddy.”
“I know you will, Kelly. He couldn’t be in any better hands.”
LYRICAL UNDERGROUND BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 1987 William W. Johnstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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First electronic edition: May 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3532-1
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