by Lorne Dixon
The pulpit on the raised stage was gone, replaced by a ring of blackened stones circling a cackling fire below a gap in the ceiling.
The sentinel stopped and faced Ross. “You don’t have to believe me, and I doubt you will, but I’ve felt what you’re feeling. I had two children, both boys, twins. Each spring we take our young Brothers out with us on a hunt, some as young as two and three. My boys were five years old.”
The wind changed direction and snow drifted in through the open windows. Watching the flakes fall from the domed ceiling, Ross had the bizarre idea that the church scene could have existed within a souvenir snow globe.
“We went out west, towards the interstate. We found a car by the side of a side road with its hood raised and a T-shirt hanging from the door. The driver was a young woman slumped over the wheel, praying. It looked like an easy kill. So I sent my boys in and watched from behind a thicket of brambles.”
Ross felt both the cold rushing in with the snow and the glow of the fire’s warmth; a war of temperatures.
The sentinel continued: “It was a trap. The driver was a store mannequin. I realized it just before I heard the shots ring out. Samuel died instantly, without a sound. But Zacharias was only shot in his side. He fell to the dust and cried out for me. I tried to run to him but each time I did there were more shots. Pinned down, I had to watch my son bleed to death.”
“That’s horrible,” Ross said.
“That,” the sentinel said, “was how I learned to hate Devil Ayers.”
The wind shifted again and the warmth of the fire drifted over him. A scent floated in the air—charcoal, wood and singed meat.
“You would have liked Samuel and Zacharias. They were good boys.” The sentinel snatched up an iron rod and ran it through the glowing embers in the fire pit. “I really did like your David. He was a good boy.”
Turning, the sentinel grinned. “In fact, he was delicious.”
Ross screamed. He could just barely make out the outline of a tiny rib cage in the flames. He raised the handgun and fired. The shot caught the sentinel in the eye and toppled him into the fire.
The Brothers, startled out of their sleep, pounced off their pews, blocking the aisle. The first beast to hurdle up onto the stage changed into human form. It was the young man who had driven the blue Honda.
Ross stepped back. Hands snagged his ankles. He twisted and kicked but couldn’t break loose. The sentinel, bleeding from his destroyed eye and half aflame, pulled Ross into the fire pit. They both howled as the flames blackened their flesh. The sentinel leaped on top of the old man and bit down on his neck, loosing a fountain of arterial spray. Ross turned his head and faced David’s charred skull.
A voice in his head said, You knew.
This time it was not Ellie’s gentle whisper.
It was David.
You knew.
Chapter Fourteen
“Beautiful kids. Pretty wife. I think it may be time to fire up the bikes for a road trip to Jackson Heights.”
Bella laughed. “Remember how we played this game last time, Chev? I’ll count to three and then I’ll pull the trigger and you won’t have to worry about your world changing any more. No more new technology you don’t understand or cars you can’t fix on the side of the road.”
Marek laughed and waved Chev’s company-issued cell phone in front of his face. In its broken screen he saw his reflection: his dark, wrinkled face and the gun pressed up to his forehead.
“One,” Bella said.
His home answering machine drifted into his thoughts, his daughters’ sweet singing, his wife’s soothing voice: We’re out caroling, so we can’t get to the phone right now. But leave us a message and we’ll return your call. Merry Christmas.
He would see them again. He would.
Thrusting his hand out, he grabbed the handle of the spare automatic pistol protruding from Bella’s waistband, pulled the trigger three times, and said, “Twothree.”
She wailed and collapsed, clutching her shattered pelvis. Blood seeped out from her pant legs. Marek shrieked in fury.
Chev dropped to the ground, wrestled up the shotgun, and fired. Buckshot sprayed the footbridge, tearing into Dev’s backpack and igniting the homemade grenades. The bridge exploded, sending a blast of heat and splintered wood flying.
Chev ran, swinging the shotgun like a bat, breaking through the pack of shell-shocked beasts. His knees popped and he nearly fell, but he staggered, kept his balance, and raced back down the path. Paws galloped against soil, steel-tipped boots digging in with each step. He cornered the limestone wall and hurdled over the dead bodies of young Brothers in his path. His heart pounded in his chest, each beat bringing a spike of pain. His feet felt slippery and numb.
Even as his vision began to blur, the Old Mill appeared at the end of the trail and beyond it, Dev’s truck. With his next stride his feet slipped on the snow and he tumbled to the ground. Gasping, he scrambled on all fours, listening to the beasts closing in, pushing himself, feeling lightheaded and drowsy, his eyesight darkening, the void calling. His hands struck the truck’s door and he strained to stand, legs wobbling, ankles bending. He threw open the door, wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, and pulled himself inside. He slammed the door shut and locked it.
Consciousness bled away.
Chapter Fifteen
Chev awoke, dizzy and disoriented. Snow covered the windows, thick enough to block out the sun. He pushed himself off the driver’s wheel and reclined back on the seat. He was thirsty, very thirsty.
The raspy breathing told Chev he wasn’t alone in the truck.
“The passenger door was unlocked,” Marek said.
Chev jolted in his seat and fumbled for the shotgun.
It was gone.
“Relax,” the leader of the beasts told him. “If I wanted you dead I would have passed you through my large intestines by now.”
Marek toggled the switch to an overhead interior light. His leather coat was drenched in blood. Bella’s blood, Chev realized. Marek handed over a key ring. “Don’t know where you thought you’d get without these.”
Chev’s hands balled up into fists.
“Hey, easy,” Marek said, extending a hand. “Put the key in the ignition and turn on the windshield wipers. It’ll give you some perspective on the situation.”
Not taking his eyes off the monster, Chev slid the key in the ignition and turned the power on. The dashboard lit up. With his free hand he triggered the wipers. Two half-ovals opened into the snow—like eyes on the windshield. The entire werewolf pack was assembled around the truck, hundreds of men, woman, children, and beasts. They stood, motionless, with their eyes locked on him. A wave of nausea passed through him, something like stage fright, but worse, the same ominous sensation a bull might have felt when entering the ring, hundreds of eyes staring it down, waiting for its death.
“Sun’s going down. Doesn’t mean anything. Not really, but it’s fitting. Tonight is our Independence Night, Chev. Tonight we stop hiding in the woods, stop living like scavengers instead of kings. We’re not bound by any meaningless pact with the town anymore now that Ayers is dead. We honored it only so the townspeople wouldn’t join his crusade and hunt down our families.”
“Dev protected the town even if they didn’t want it,” Chev said. “You killed innocent people.”
“Who’s innocent?” Marek asked. “They’ve always hunted us and we’ve always hunted them. Who decides which side is wrong or right? You? Me? Or maybe we just let nature sort it out, see which species is stronger.”
“Why haven’t you killed me?”
Marek’s voice softened. He was speaking through a smile. “Because you’ve made tonight possible. We didn’t count on you showing up. Imagine my surprise when I heard Lew Daudelin was dead the night we finally snared a decent candidate to trap Devil Ayers. It was a sign, an omen. You don’t understand, of course. Lew was the Elder who signed the original pact with Easter Glen. He was the reason we’ve
lived in the shadows for the last fifty years.
“You came at just the right time. Old Ross was a confused old man. We could smell the disgust he had for himself, the oceans of shame and guilt that flowed through his veins instead of blood. No telling what a man like him might do. You’re presence made him believe he could save his grandson. He never would have trusted an outback redneck like Ayers or a girl barely out of high school. But you, he had faith in you.”
“Why haven’t you killed me?” Chev asked again.
Marek reached over and turned the key. The engine rumbled to life. “Because you’re going to lead our parade through town, our Christmas parade.”
“If I don’t?”
Chev turned and saw Marek’s face distorted by a wide grin. “Then we kill you, eat you, destroy the town anyway, and then ride out to New York, find your family, and kill and eat them.”
Chev dropped his hands on the wheel.
“Any other questions?”
Chapter Sixteen
Chev drove. The beasts followed in a caravan of cars stolen from their victims, mid-century antiques with fins and bench seats to modern luxury cars with automatic sunroofs. They bore license plates from Illinois and Florida, California and New Jersey, every state Chev had driven through and some he had not.
On the outskirts of town, just as dirt gave way to asphalt, a single carload of Brothers pulled into each driveway they passed. Closer to the center of town, the forest disappeared and suburban lawns appeared, houses built on neat, square lots. So close together. The long line of cars behind Dev’s truck thinned out as each car found its target and pulled into a driveway.
In the center of town, the remaining cars veered off down side streets and into dead-end developments. Smoke rose from house fires. Before long, they covered Easter Glen. Children ran through the streets, screaming, chased by beasts. The bodies of men and women littered the roadway, some strung up on telephone poles like scarecrows.
A few gunshots rang out, but only a few and only very occasionally. The townspeople had grown too comfortable in their lives to fight back, too assured in the sanctity of the pact. It was nothing like a battle. Easter Glen became a slaughterhouse.
Chev passed the grammar school, now smoldering, a ruin already. There would be no classes tomorrow, no children to teach, no lessons to be learned. The town had already failed its most important test.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Marek asked him as they passed a group of Brothers loading bodies onto a flatbed truck. He saw an old woman’s reading glasses fall from her face as they tossed her on top. Chev wished the old woman hadn’t been able to see the monster that had torn open her chest with its claws. But with her eyes open, she probably had.
Chev tasted bile in his mouth. “It’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” Marek chuckled, “but isn’t horrible beautiful?”
They drove. Marek turned on the headlights. The destroyed town appeared in the two cones of light. Driving overnight, he’d often noticed that his headlights would rob the landscape of its natural colors and turn everything gray, but not tonight. The smears of red on the center line were as bright as ever.
Finally, after hours of watching horrors unfold beyond the windshield, Marek pointed to a construction site and told him to pull over.
Killing the engine, Chev asked, “What now?”
Marek pointed to the half-built cinderblock walls. “They were building a WellMart here, you know, a superstore, groceries and clothing. It would have employed a couple hundred people from town, give or take. A lot of them thought it was a good idea. Little businesses like the Food Cabinet, they couldn’t have competed with their prices or selection. And eventually all those mom-and-pop stores would have closed. People like Bella would have been out of a job. The town would have suffered.”
Chev clutched the steering wheel. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“Oh, it matters,” Marek said. “You think that we’re the villains because we shift between man and wolf? Our race has been doing that since before recorded history. Yeah, we kill. What animal doesn’t? What is it that you think the people of Easter Glen had on their Christmas feast plates tonight? The Brothers don’t cut each other’s throats for ten cents savings on a can of tuna fish.
They’re the ones who’ve changed, who lie to themselves about what they are, delude themselves into thinking that they are the cause of no suffering as they carve their holiday bird.”
Chev snorted. “So you’re the heroes?”
“No, of course not.” Marek stared out the windshield at the burning town. “There’s no room left in this world for heroes.”
Reaching across Chev’s chest, Marek opened the driver’s side door. He pointed down Main Street. “This is where we get out. There’s someone who’d like to meet you.”
Marek shoved him out the door. He caught the window crank with one hand, hung on, and managed to land on his feet. A pair of large, muscular hands wrapped around his head. Chev stared up at a gnarled face hidden behind a forest of wiry facial hair. The wild man lifted him off the ground and tossed him against the truck’s open door. Bone cracked and metal groaned. Chev fell to his knees.
“Introductions,” Marek said as he came around the truck. “This skyscraper of flesh and hair is Gabryel Daudelin. Gabe, this is the outsider who killed your father.”
Slowly pulling himself to his feet, Chev said, “It was an accident … it was dark … he came out …”
Gabryel snickered. “I hated my father.”
“We all hated him” —Marek slapped Gabryel’s back— “for what he did. For the pact.”
Gabryel spat. “Glad he’s dead. I’ll give you a full minute. It’s the least I can do after all you’ve done for us.”
Chev ran. He jumped over a length of freshly sculpted French curbing onto Main Street.
A trio of Brothers in human form swung aluminum baseball bats into the windows of parked cars. Seeing Chev, they howled and danced. He turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, passing Gabryel, now sitting in the driver’s side of Dev’s truck, staring at his watch.
The truck’s diesel engine roared to life. Its massive tires squealed as it pulled out onto the road behind Chev. Headlights lit the street, bounced off street signs and sent shafts of reflected light into the yards. Brothers poured out of houses on both sides of the street, hooting and howling.
Already panting, Chev sprinted down the street, listening to the roar of the truck’s acceleration and the drumming of feet against asphalt behind him. Jumping the curb, he cut through a split level ranch’s front yard. He nearly tripped over his own feet when he saw the bodies piled up in the rock garden, a family of four reduced to a pile of drying compost. He wretched but didn’t stop running.
He followed a length of wrought iron fence between the ranch and a three story McMansion, trying to distance himself from the road. The truck’s engine became a low grumble but the pounding of human feet and lupine paws continued. He didn’t dare look back.
Crossing the McMansion’s backyard, he turned his head to avoid seeing the strips of glistening flesh hanging down from a second story balcony. A shotgun blast boomed from a few houses over, not terribly different from the crackle of backyard fireworks on the Fourth Of July, but followed not by applause but by screams.
Leaping over a low hedge row, Chev landed in the next yard. The back door to the old brick house was open, the welcome mat overturned, the spare key still dangling from the lock. He caught a glimpse inside—spastic motion of thick black fur and spraying blood. He turned the corner of the house and ran down the front yard to the street.
On the other side, an old man pounded on the doors of a white-paneled church. The door opened and he rushed inside. Chest pounding, Chev bolted across the street and hit both doors with his fists. Glancing back, he saw a group of beasts galloping out across the street, tongues wagging from their bloodstained mouths, ears pulled back.
The door cracked open. An old priest peeked out.
“You have to let me in. They’re coming, they’re—”
The priest threw the door open and ushered him inside before slamming the door closed and bolting it. Chev fell against a statue of Saint Albertus Magnus and slid down the granite body. He put his hands on his chest and closed his eyes. His breathing began to slow to a more normal rate.
The priest’s hand dropped onto his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
Opening his eyes, Chev shook his head. “No.”
The priest nodded. “Then you should force yourself to stand. There are many moments you should spend on your knees, but this isn’t one of them. And there’s something you really should see.”
Chev took the priest’s hand and pulled himself back onto his feet. The priest pointed. Chev turned. The church was filled, each seat in each pew taken.
Most were human. Most.
“My name is Millard Flinn,” the priest whispered. The congregation turned. Animal eyes glowered. “And this is my flock.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you one of them?” Chev yelled into the priest’s face, spraying spittle as he stumbled backward into the statue of Magnus.
Flinn smiled. “A sinner? A monster? I am. We all are.”
Chev balled both hands into fists.
“No need for that,” the priest said, reached inside his clerical vest, withdrew a small handgun, and handed it to Chev handle first. “This is a loaded Baretta 92 9mm semi-automatic. Consider it a gift. God provides, after all. Consider it also as proof that, for the moment, you’re safe. No one here will hurt you.”
Chev swung the gun towards the beasts in the pews.
The congregation brought guns out of their laps—hunting rifles, shotguns, revolvers and pistols. The beasts hissed. Chev lowered the Baretta.
“In the beginning,” Flinn told him, leaning in close, “there were just a few of them, living out in the farming fields, picking off livestock. We ignored them and cut our losses with the occasional milk cow or hog. A couple years on, though, the children started to go missing, snatched out of their bedroom windows at night.”