The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  “It’s gross out there,” Leslie said, cutting her eyes to the outside.

  “Yeah,” Donna said. “I heard that Bob Marshall got killed. They were shooting at Mr. Donovan, and he bowed up and shot back. Virginia got killed, too.”

  “It couldn’t happen to a nicer pair,” Mike said. The others agreed with him.

  “Will somebody please tell me what is going on?” Martha asked. “The last thing I remember was sitting in history listening to Mr. Gaines bump his gums. But according to the date on my watch, that was last week!”

  “That’s right,” Matt said. “Same with my watch. I think it’s got something to do with that devil’s coven we’ve all heard about.”

  “I don’t wanna burn in hell!” Bobby wailed.

  “Be quiet, Bobby,” Linda told him. “None of us here are going to hell.”

  The sounds of shooting drew them all to the high windows. They climbed on boxes and chairs and old packing crates and looked out at the street.

  “That’s Mr. Kelley out there,” Ronny said. “That trashy Barlow boy just shot him.”

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “And look who’s with him. Sam Bradley, Frankie Marley, Jason and Ginny Matisse, and a whole bunch of other crapheads.”

  “They’re leaving,” Val said. “Come on, let’s drag Mr. Kelley in here and see if we can help him.”

  “For sure, let’s move out of this spooky basement,” Leslie said. “We can use the gym.”

  “Sounds good,” Matt said. “Come on.”

  They managed to get the badly wounded Kelley into the gym and lay him on a mat. “Listen to me, kids,” Kelley gasped. “I did three tours in ’Nam. I know how hard hit I am. I can’t feel anything from the waist down. And one lung’s gone. So listen to me. Whole damn town’s gone crazy. No, that’s not true. But a lot of people have.” He gasped for breath and his chest wound began sucking. “Deputies Leon Tilden and Miles have holed up in the courthouse with some other people. Some other folks with them. From what I’ve been able to put together, this is some sort of devil’s coven that’s clouded the minds of people. The sheriffs dead; he was tortured to death. Link Donovan’s got a bunch out at his house, Gerard’s got some more out at his place. Far as I know, those three places are the only safe places. Don’t trust anyone, kids. Jack Matisse, Nelson Marshall, Ed Westcott, Dr. Bradshaw, Dave Bradley, Charlie Ford, Dick Marley . . . them or none of their friends. They’re all in this . . . takeover.”

  “How about the city cops?” Martha asked.

  Kelley shook his head. “No. God, no. Chief Spencer is one of them. All his force came back and they’re rounding up people who try to fight. Not many have broken free of the mind-clouding that had us all ... goofy-acting. My wife Sarah, she turned against me. Tried to kill me. Left with some . . . guy. Get to my house. Get my guns and fight them. Keys to my car and truck in my pocket. You’ve got to ... fight. Got to . . .”

  Kelley closed his eyes and died.

  “He lives . . . lived two blocks back of here,” Matt said. “Come on. If we don’t arm ourselves, we’re dead meat. Barry, your dad’s a gun nut. How’s he acting?”

  “Stupid. Him and Mom just sit in the den and look at a blank TV screen. Every now and then they’ll point at it and laugh. It’s like they’re seeing something there that I can’t see.”

  “Same with my folks,” Vincent said.

  “And mine,” Susan said.

  “That’s got to be important,” Leslie said. “But I don’t know how.”

  “I don’t, either,” Matt said. “Come on. Find something to spread over Mr. Kelley, and then let’s get the hell gone from here and find something to fight with.” He went through the dead man’s pockets, taking the keys. Donna spread a blanket over Kelley and the kids walked to the rear of the gym.

  “We can’t all go at once,” Jerry said. “That big a group would attract too much attention. We gotta split up into smaller groups. I’ll take a bunch and head for my house; get Dad’s car and guns.”

  “Good idea,” Matt said. “I’ll lead the bunch over to Kelly’s house. Leslie, you take a bunch and head for your house. Ronny, Martha, you do the same. Get all the guns and ammo you can find and your folks’ cars. We’ll meet out behind Alden’s Supermarket and make some plans there, okay?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  The kids vanished into the misty night, running silently and swiftly.

  * * *

  “A truck just drove by and dumped something out on the side of the road,” Paul yelled from his post. “Looks like a body.”

  “Come on, Tom,” Link said. “I’ll get a tarp to wrap the body in. I think they probably brought Ray to us. What’s left of him,” he added tightly.

  It was Ray. He’d been tortured to death, strange symbols carved into his naked flesh, savagely mutilated. His badge was pinned to the flesh on his chest. The men wrapped him in the tarp and carried him to the barn. Toby Belenger came out and stood silently, praying under his breath.

  “Get Gerard on the horn, Tom,” Link said. “Tell him about Ray.”

  “Link?” the young deputy said. “They can’t be allowed to get away with this. And I don’t mean bringing them to justice in a court of law.”

  There was a hard light in the deputy’s eyes. Link said, “I expect Gerard feels the same way, Tom. This is anarchy now. Throw your law and order code book out the window. And, Tom? I don’t plan on taking too many prisoners.”

  Chapter 7

  “Those holed up in the courthouse tried to make it out to my place,” Gerard told Link over the radio. “They got cut off and had to take cover in there. They’re surrounded and in bad shape. I’ve got Dan Knox and Bob Evans and families with me. And Carla’s here and so is Dee. Dee’s pretty shook up. Carla gave her a pill and she’s lying down.”

  “Okay, Gerard. Talk to you later.” Link went back into the house and began gearing up.

  “Where are you going, Link?” Anne asked.

  “To help some people out of a bad situation.” He handed the remote control firing device to Tom. “If I don’t come back, it’s up to you. There are ten bombs planted around; I showed you. This turns the device on. You have numbers one through ten. I showed you how I numbered them. The rest are trip wires. Paul knows how to turn on both generators. Lock the gates behind me. I’m gone.”

  Link kissed Anne and took the walkie-talkie with him. He cranked up his father’s old pickup truck. It was fifteen years old but still in good condition. It sat high off the ground on huge tires and had heavy expanded metal all the way across the grill, to enable the truck to go through thick brush without disabling the lights or radiator.

  He was expecting a roadblock and he wasn’t disappointed. As he approached the city limits sign, the headlights picked up a group of men by the road. They had set up wooden sawhorses to block the blacktop. He recognized some of the men and was not surprised to find them belonging to something as evil as a devil’s coven. Link stepped on the gas and stuck his MAC-10 out the window, resting his forearm on the west coast mirror brace. Seeing that he was not going to stop, the men in the road lifted rifles to their shoulders.

  Link squeezed the trigger on the .45 caliber spitter and crashed the blockade. He watched as three men hit the ground, bloody holes in their chests.

  “Donovan!” a man yelled. “Kill him, kill him!”

  But Link was long gone. He had cut his lights and pulled off the highway. He had an idea. He flipped on the CB/scanner that his dad had installed years back. It was a wild night, all right, and getting wilder and bloodier. He caught snatches of conversation.

  “... Told old Judge Britton to kiss ass. We’d waited long enough. He sure was pissed off, man.”

  “. . . So was the Jacksons and Matisse and them others. But they’ll get over it.”

  “... I seen Pete kill two old people and a nigger. I seen it, boy. He caught ’em runnin’ up the street and blowed ’em away.”

  “. . . Link Donovan’s in town. He run right th
rough the roadblock and killed three of ourn.”

  “... The town’s ours, boys. Next comes the parish, then the state, and then the whole damn country! Praise be to the Dark One.”

  “Asshole,” Link muttered. “But I think you did me a favor by breaking free.” He drove to a propane dealership and parked his truck in the rear, close to the building. He popped the lock off the back door and found the keys to a tanker truck hanging on a pegboard.

  Link checked the first tanker the keys would fit. It was full of propane. Fourteen hundred gallons. He took two high explosive grenades from the rucksack and cranked the truck, rolling without lights toward the center of town and the courthouse.

  He caught a glimpse of some young kids crouched behind a hedgerow. Link stopped the truck and backed up. He could hear the sounds of gunfire very plain now.

  “Kids,” he called softly, “I’m Link Donovan. If you’re friendly, come on out. But if you’re part of this godless coven, I swear I’ll shoot every damn one of you.”

  “It’s me, Mr. Link,” a girl called. “Susan Williams. You spoke to our class last year. Mr. Link, we just saw a bunch of thugs kill Mr. Kelley over by the school.”

  Link stepped out of the truck and walked swiftly to the hedgerow. Susan was one of ten young people. He noticed that most of them were armed. Except for three kids that looked to be about eight or ten. And so scared they were trembling. “You got wheels, Susan?”

  “No, sir.”

  He pointed to a boy he knew only as Chuck. “See that station wagon over there, Chuck? Go see if the keys are in it.”

  They were.

  “Back it out here and you kids pile in.”

  “But that’s stealing, Mr. Link!” the boy said.

  “No it isn’t, Chuck. It’s commandeering. This is war.” To Susan he said, “You know where Gerard Lucas lives?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Head there. I don’t think they’re under attack yet. Yell and holler and tell those in the house who you are and who sent you out there.” Link smiled. “Tell Gerard if he doubts your story, I said to remind him of the time we skipped school and went swimming and he got a leech on his dick. I promised never to tell and I haven’t, until this night.”

  Susan blushed.

  “It’s good to see a young person blush, Susan. I can’t tell you how nice a sight that is.”

  Two pickup trucks rounded the corner and Link almost gave them a burst from the MAC-10.

  “That’s Matthew and his bunch. The second truck belongs to Mr. Pauling. That’s Jerry behind the wheel. They’re all right.”

  Link walked to the lead truck. “Oh, man, Mr. Link!” Matt said, his voice filled with relief. “Are we glad to see you. We must have seen twenty or thirty dead bodies in the last ten minutes. Jesus, what’s going on in this town?”

  “The lack of Jesus,” Link told him. The bed of the truck had seven kids in it, ranging in age from eight to sixteen. “Odd,” Link muttered. “No one appears to be over the age of sixteen.”

  “There’s about fifty of us,” Matt told him. “And no one is over sixteen.” He told him about the parents and others just sitting around looking at blank TV screens, pointing and laughing. “What does it mean, sir?”

  “Sir? You actually said sir. I’m impressed with you, Matt. I’m impressed with the whole bunch of you. What does it mean? I don’t know. Blank screens?” He shook his head. “Susan, you take your bunch and this bunch behind Matt out to Gerard’s. Matt, you head for my place. Take the back roads. No, better yet, you head out to the propane plant on Dickson Road. Run without lights and park in the back, by my old pickup. Wait for me there. Take off.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Before he could pull off, three men stepped out of the shadows, all armed. “Prime pussy here, Lester,” one said. “Prime pussy. And we get to bring back the head of Link Donovan. What a glorious night this is.”

  Link shot them. He lifted the MAC-10 and squeezed off half a clip. The men stumbled backward and died on the sidewalk. “Get their weapons and go through their pockets for ammo. Do it, kids. Quickly.”

  “You’re cold, Mr. Link,” Matt said. “I sure am glad you’re on God’s side. They ought to make a movie about you and let you star in it.”

  “He’s sure handsome enough,” a teenage girl said from the bed of the truck.

  “Take off, kids,” Link said with a smile. Pretty gutsy bunch of young people. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. And if I find any more of our group?”

  “Split them up. Send half to Gerard’s and have the other half stay with you until I get there.”

  “You heading to the courthouse to take on all that bunch up there, Mr. Link?” Matt asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Alone? There must be thirty or forty nuts up there.”

  “I don’t seem to have a whole lot of choice in the matter, Matt. Don’t worry. I’ll pull it off.”

  “You’re a brave man,” Linda Chavez said.

  One of the girls in the bed of the truck was looking at Link, and her gaze silently told him what he could have if he’d but find the proper place. Link sighed. He dug in his pocket and handed the girl a quarter.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  He placed it against the denim of her knee, inside. “Now press your other knee against it. That’s right. Now see how long you can hold it there.”

  She grinned at him and blushed. “I get the point, sir.”

  “I hope so. Take off, kids.”

  He drove to near the center of town and parked about a block from the spanking new courthouse building and got out, standing beside the tanker truck. The heaviest concentration of the attackers were on the south side, crouched behind a dozen or more vehicles. Link smiled. Figuring they had filled their tanks, that was about two hundred gallons of gasoline that was going to add to the big bang.

  Link got back in the truck and hefted the two high explosive grenades. “Give me the full time,” he muttered. “I don’t want to go up with this truck.”

  He secured his rucksack filled with clips for pistol and MAC-10, and slung it across his chest. Then, driving without lights, he pulled the propane truck up to the corner of the street. The firing was very intense from the coven member’s side; not much fire was coming from those inside the courthouse, ground floor. He pulled the pins from the grenades and tucked them under his legs, holding the spoons down.

  “Here we go,” he muttered, and floorboarded the truck. He roared across the street, jumped the curb, and threw the transmission into neutral, then bailed out onto the cold ground. He skinned one hand, got some splinters in his butt, and bumped his head when he impacted with the ground, but that was nothing compared to what the coven members were about to get.

  “Give thanks to the Lord for what you’re about to receive, boys!” Link yelled, and dove behind a huge old tree.

  The coven members had whirled around at the sound of the rampaging propane truck. They had about two seconds to stand numbly as the truck lumbered up to them.

  The two HE grenades exploded, the pop-off valve on the tanker blew, and fourteen hundred gallons of propane went off. The concussion sent a wave of shock and heat over the courthouse lawn.

  Link covered his head with his hands, curled up in a protective ball behind the tree, and waited it out. When the debris had stopped falling, he opened his eyes to a world of eerie dancing light and peeped around the tree trunk.

  The courthouse lawn was a searing inferno as the gas tanks of the coven member’s vehicles exploded. Several men had been blown apart by the explosion; various pieces of bodies were scattered around the lawn. A leg here, an arm there, a head lying in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.

  The explosion blew out all the windows on that side of the courthouse building and knocked down the statue of either the town’s founding father or a confederate soldier. Link never knew which it was. Somebody had stolen the brass inscription plate about seven
ty-five years back and no one in town could remember just who the guy was.

  Several men staggered, screaming, out of the flames, walking and lurching balls of fire. Link leveled the MAC-10 and put them out of their misery. He ran from behind the tree and made the courthouse steps just as Dave Bradley staggered to his feet, blood from a cut on his forehead streaming down his face, and Miles and Tilden came running out of the building.

  “Miles!” Link shouted, shoving the addled Bradley toward the deputy. “Grab this one. We need some alive. Get to your vehicles and head out to my place. Move, people.”

  Link grabbed Leon Tilden. “Take me back to my truck, Leon. Then escort some kids out to my place. Is that walkie-talkie on your belt high band?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Give it to me so I can keep in touch with Gerard and Tom. Let’s go.”

  “What are you goin’ to be doin’?”

  “Roaming for a few minutes.”

  “You’re a dead man, Donovan,” Dave Bradley told him as his hands were being cuffed behind his back.

  Link smiled at him. “Somehow, Bradley, I feel your demise will come long before mine.”

  * * *

  Link shifted locations after the kids had left, following Leon to his house and safety. At least more safety than the town would have provided them.

  He drove about a mile from the propane plant and pulled in behind a mom-and-pop grocery store on the edge of town. “Link to Tom,” he radioed.

  “Tom. Go ahead.”

  “Everybody make it out there okay?”

  “That’s ten-four. Gerard says the other bunch is safe at his place. He says you kept your mouth shut for thirty years about that leech, whatever that means.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Gerard broke in. “You all right, Link?”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later. Link out.”

  He left his truck and stayed in the shadows of the building, working his way around to the front of the store. A light rain was falling and the glow of the fire was nearly gone, the rain putting it out. No fire trucks had rolled on this one. He heard a moaning from the empty lot next to the store. Link looked around him, could see no one, and ran to the weed-filled lot.