Her breath caught. In her mind’s eye, she could almost see through the hedge to the mob of elfin figures crouched in the yard beyond, as they looked up as one from the dog’s body and craned toward her, and their eyes . . .
She turned and ran for the porch and felt as if she were wading in molasses, moving impossibly slow and fighting for her balance and losing a slipper but not worrying to recover it. You’ll make it, she panted, you’re only a few feet away and the door is still unlocked and besides, they’ve got to go around the fence . . .
Chain links popped. One after another, quickly, like ripping metal fabric.
She reached for the doorknob even as she chanced a backward glance. The hedge was moving.
She turned the knob, or tried to. It didn’t budge. With both hands she frantically grabbed at the knob and twisted and threw her weight against the wood and this time it gave. The force sent Bart crashing back down the hallway and Del screamed as she plunged inside.
“Are you nuts?” Bart was incredulous. “You went outside?”
“Close the door!” Billie cried even as she launched herself at it and slammed it shut and pushed in the unbelievably feeble lock button. “Get a chair from the kitchen,” she said frantically. “We’ve got to block the door. Who knows how many there are—”
“How many what?” Bart tried to get past her to see out the door window. “Did you see them? We tried to tell you!”
“I didn’t see anyone!” she snapped. “I just heard someone—I think they killed Bruiser and they were coming this way.” Her eyes widened. “The windows! Are they all locked?!”
Del, still clutching his garlic bread, put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mom. They can’t get in. They’ve got to be invited.”
“Wha—dammit, Del, would you two stop with the monsters? This is serious! Get to the phone and call Charlie at home. He’s closer than the county sheriff. . . .”
Bart nodded. “I’ll call Chris.”
“You’ll do no such thing—”
“Both of you, shut up!” Del held a shaking finger to his lips. “Listen!”
The three of them sat there crouched on the floor in silence, waiting. Billie expected to hear the scuff of feet on the porch just outside, the jiggle of the knob right before her face. Instead they heard a distant knock. It was on the front door at the other end of the hall.
“Don’t answer it!” Bart hissed, moving halfway down the hall to switch off the lights. “They’ve got to be invited in! They can’t come in unless we ask ’em!”
The knock came again, this time insistent. Powerful. It shook the heavy door on its hinges. Del started to cry; Billie pulled him close, wanting to join him but staying strong for their sakes. She motioned to Bart and mouthed, “Get to the phone,” but the teenager’s attention was fixed with morbid fascination on the front door as he awaited the next knock.
It did not come. Not for several minutes, or at least it seemed that long.
There was a muffled report, like a string of firecrackers, and part of the door splintered inward with explosive force. The knob and deadbolt fell to the ground, still connected to a single chunk of wood. The door swung open, and the Millers stared at the shadowy figure in the entrance, framed by the sterile moonlight beyond. No one moved. Not until Stiles’s low, but harsh voice echoed through the house. “Everybody out!”
Billie stood hesitantly. “Chris?”
“I said move!” he growled, limping down the hallway and shifting the H & K to one hand so he could grab Bart by the collar and shove him toward the door. Del ran to the man and hugged his waist but Stiles caught his arm and guided him along after his brother. Then his powerful hand caught Billie’s and she had to move quickly to keep from being dragged through the house.
“Hold on just a minute,” she said defiantly, though not fighting him. “Just where do you think you’re taking us?”
As they came through the front door he turned and looked her in the eyes and she saw his face in the moonlight. It brought a gasp in reaction; she reached out to touch the swollen eye and bruised flesh but he caught her wrist. “Boys,” he called to them, “put your mom in the van.”
She noticed that his eyes were no longer focused on her. He was looking away toward the side of the house. Del and Bart grabbed her arms before she could turn and they hustled her across the yard, moving so fast she couldn’t even spare a look back. Not until she reached the van. Only then did she get a good look at the figures standing at the edge of the house.
There were not six or seven as she’d expected from the dog’s cries and the destruction of the fence. There were two. They were little more than slight shadows standing just beyond the bushes there, watching. Stiles stood in the middle of the lawn facing them, and his whispered taunts were so angry they reached even her ears. “C’mon, fuckers. Let’s see how bad you are.” He even lowered the carbine as invitation but still the figures would not move.
Billie looked around the rest of the neighborhood. Stiles’s curses, like the dog’s yelps, should have awakened everyone in the immediate vicinity. But there were no lights on in the Citozzi’s house, or the Schloesser’s or the Ingrams or the Chastains or any of them. “Somebody, help!” she yelled. “Call the police!”
“Shut up!” Stiles barked at her, turning. “Do you want to get someone else killed?”
With his back turned, the dark ones in the bushes came rushing on.
She tried to shout a warning. But the sight of those dark figures scurrying like human spiders across the lawn stole her voice. But Stiles was already turning, expectant. The sighting beam swept across the figures at waist level and the H & K played another riff. One figure reacted like a movie stuntman and pitched backward as the rounds slapped into its gut. Just as quickly it was back on its feet and running, this time in the opposite direction. The other figure was caught at waist level and the shock of impact made its feet dig in and skid to a stop. The rest of it, however, kept on going and the cleanly separated torso spilled onto the lawn like a crab thrown from its perch. It flailed about before finally righting itself and scrambling back into the darkness of the hedge, an obscene insect leaving its lower limbs to writhe alone on the moonlit grass.
Stiles hobbled to the van while he changed magazines and forced the stunned Billie inside with the kids. He climbed into the pilot’s chair with obvious discomfort and gunned the engine. “Charlie’s in trouble,” he told them. “Hold on and we still might make it.” He stomped on the gas. The van jolted away from the curb and careened down the sleepy neighborhood street, then squealed around the corner and headed toward the middle of town.
Billie leaned her head against the window and kept telling herself that it was all a dream, that it wasn’t real, that Rod Serling would step out in a minute to explain the plot before station identification. Even the town was different; she watched it whirl by and somehow knew this was not her home. It looked like it, right down to the smallest detail, but it didn’t feel like it. That’s what gave it away. It had no life. It was a facsimile, a facade from a Hollywood back lot that looked completely real from the front but concealed two-by-four bracing and rigging lines and technicians doing sound checks.
There were people up ahead, milling about on the sidewalk, both children and adults. The headlights flashed across them and for an instant each had cats’ eyes, reflecting red and silver, and then they were all running like Halloween pranksters and the van was suddenly past them and turning onto the main street.
She closed her eyes so tight that dark purple spots danced before them. Just a dream. Just a dream.
“There’s Charlie’s place, Mr. Stiles,” Bart pointed as they wheeled around the corner. “The apartment above where the pizza shop used to be. See his squad car?” Stiles’s reply was to steer the van right for it, barely wasting time to brake. The tires screeched and the rear end swung around in the middle
of the street, and Stiles was out almost before it had come to a full stop. “Which way in?” he called back, cocking the Uzi pistol he now carried.
Bart pointed to the doorway between the two shops, but his shouted directions were drowned out by a sudden explosion of glass.
A uniformed body hurtled backward through the upstairs window and arched toward the ground as if in slow motion, twisting and turning amid a rain of sparkling shards. The flight ended abruptly as he landed head first atop the police car parked below. The impact crumpled the roof like a tin can and popped the windshield out of its frame and shattered the red flashers. It even coaxed a dying mewl from the loudspeaker. And intermingled with that cacophony was the unmistakable sound of breaking bone. The body flopped limply to the side, end over end like a rag doll, and came to rest across the engine hood.
Stiles went slowly forward, wincing from the pain of each step. “Charlie?” he whispered, reaching out to the motionless form.
Dutch Larson sat up and smiled toothily. “Fix that desk yet?” the vampire said before it launched itself at the startled soldier.
Stiles tried to bring the gun up but Larson knocked it spinning away and went for the throat, clawing and catching Stiles’s shirt and pulling him into a bear hug. Stiles went with the momentum instead of fighting it and drove his head straight into the vampire’s mouth. It bought him a second or two of surprise, just enough time to slip Larson’s grip and to lock one of those meaty arms behind him. Then, with a bit of leverage and a handful of hair, he spun the marshal completely around and drove his face into the fender of the patrol car, again and again.
Larson shoved him away and shook his head to clear it, then laughed. “That the best you can do, boy?” he taunted, despite his own physical condition. Stiles’s defense had pulped a cheekbone and spread out his nose like a pad of butter, but those were the least of his injuries. A point-blank shotgun blast had left a cavity in his chest big enough to stick a cat through, and the fall had rendered his balding head even balder, this time clear to the bone. Hitting the light bar atop the cruiser had sheared off most of his scalp; it now hung in his face like a displaced toupee, connected only by a few strands of flesh. His shirt was tented by jutting rib bones and soaked with blood from some previous victim.
Charlie? Stiles glanced at the window upstairs with dread.
“What’s wrong, boy?” Larson said, stalking him. “You don’t look like you feel too good. C’mon.” He yawned like a bear trap and oily spittle ran down his chin. “I’ll make it quick, I swear. C’mere.”
Stiles made a lunge for the van but Larson anticipated it and scrambled into his path, arms outstretched. In reflex the soldier jumped into the air, spun and buried a heel in the marshal’s mouth. But the move sent a flash of pain through his own body, straight from groin to brain, and it stole his balance. He came down on his pivot leg that now wobbled like rubber, and he collapsed, his vision blurred, his mind swimming. All he could see was Larson’s leering face coming at him again, spitting teeth along the way but retaining the two important ones. “Good try, boy,” he smirked, “but no ci-gar.”
Then Dutch flinched. He backed up a step, looking about perplexed, and then he flinched again as if stung by a wasp and he rubbed at his eye. The red dot that appeared on the back of his hand was comparatively weak as lasers go but still strong enough to burn the optic nerve. Larson turned his half-blind eye on Billie, standing a few feet away with Stiles’s carbine at her shoulder. “Stay back, Dutch,” she warned, “or so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
“Kill me?” he said, and for a moment his face slackened. Like a cloud passing before the moon, he lost that feral glint. “Kill me, Billie?” he whispered. “Why, I almost wish you could.” Then his eyes narrowed and the grin returned, fracturing his face from one ear to the other.
“Shoot him, Mom!”
“DO IT!” Stiles yelled.
Billie’s finger tensed on the trigger. But there it froze—she couldn’t pull it through. And by then, Larson was already on her. He charged and brushed the gun aside, caught her by the shoulders. Stiles was already on his feet and struggling toward them, but he was just too far away.
Dutch pulled her head to one side and she could do nothing to stop him; she was rigid with terror. She could only whimper as he licked her neck, a big sloppy dog kiss, oily and tainted, and then he laughed and bared his teeth—and gasped.
He drew back and grabbed his mouth, which was smoking inexplicably, then flung the woman aside and began to run. Stiles reached Billie a half-second later, jerked the rifle from her numb hands and ripped open the fleeing figure’s back with an erratic burst. But it only knocked the vampire on his face; a moment later he was up and running again, around the corner and out of sight.
“I . . . I couldn’t move,” Billie mumbled as she leaned against Stiles for support, too shocked to even cry or be afraid. “I looked at him and I just looked and looked and I couldn’t move, not even when he . . .” She grimaced with disgust and wiped at the wetness on her throat. Even the little golden crucifix on her necklace was slimy with his spit. Her eyes widened; she pulled the trinket from her neck and gaped at it. “This? He touched this? Then that means . . . he really is a . . .”
Bart sighed to his brother. “It’s about time.”
“I don’t get it,” Del said, staring at her crucifix. “It didn’t work for me.”
Before Bart could say a word Stiles had shoved the carbine into his arms and, recovering his own Uzi, they went through the doorway between the shops. The door at the top of the staircase was standing wide open, beckoning, inviting them in. To see what, Billie wondered, fighting back her chill. Stiles went up the steps without a sound and slipped inside. He returned in a minute and motioned for them to come up.
Charlie Bean sat on the couch in the middle of what was once his living room, amid overturned furniture and broken glass. He held a pump shotgun across his lap and stared vacantly into space.
“Charlie?”
Bean turned his head toward the doorway slowly, his expression blank, and he turned the barrel of the Mossberg as well. “It’s okay, Charlie,” Chris said. He gave the Uzi to Del and then held up his empty hands. “See? Now I’m going to come over there, okay? Just lower the gun.” He started across the room but the shotgun did not lower. If anything it actually raised, so that halfway to the couch Stiles realized that it was trained on his face. “Put the gun down, Charlie.”
“Open your mouth,” the deputy ordered.
Billie called to him, “Charlie, please . . .”
He racked the pump on his gun. “Open your fuckin’ mouth!”
Stiles yawned for him. “See? No fangs.” He nodded to the others and they did likewise. “Now, satisfied?”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Bean blinked. The hands holding the shotgun began to shake, violently, and he stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. Stiles took the weapon from him. “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, cradling his head in his hands, “Oh, Jesus, what if Susie’d been home . . . what if she’d been home . . .”
Billie dug a blanket from the closet and put it around his shoulders, while Bart and Del made a fresh pot of coffee. She found a bottle of tranquilizers in the bathroom medicine cabinet. It took three of them before Charlie would finally calm down.
Stiles was standing at the shattered window, looking out into the night, when Billie came up behind him, put her arms around him, and hugged herself to his back. But he barely acknowledged her presence. His attention was focused on the dark, deserted street below. “How many do you think are out there?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he said somberly. He motioned to the street. “Look at it. This place is already gone, or most of it at least. It isn’t even a town anymore. It’s a battlefield.” He was looking away from her when he said that, so she did not see the flicker of a grin drift across his brui
sed and bloody features. “A battlefield,” he repeated to himself in a bare whisper, and the grin became an unsettling smile. “I’ve come home.”
Chapter Fourteen
Billie awoke with a jolt. The nightmare had been so vivid that she was still wiping at her neck where Larson’s tongue had fouled her. But the sight of sunlight spilling through the window across the room was a relief. It eased the tension from her shoulders. Just an awful dream after all, she thought, lying back and closing her eyes. Just an ugly dream.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
Bart was standing at the foot of the couch, looking down at her in concern. “You yelled just now,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m . . . uh . . .” Details finally started to seep through the fuzziness surrounding her mind. Like the fact that her oldest son was cradling a machine gun in his arms. She looked around the room again, this time realizing that it wasn’t her bedroom after all but Charlie Bean’s apartment, that she was lying on the couch and that one of the windows, the one Dutch had been blasted through, was now patched with plywood slats and plastic sheeting. Then it wasn’t a dream. She suddenly felt very cold inside.
“Mom?”
She forced a smile. “I’m okay, hon. Just a nightmare.” Another glance around. “Where is everyone?”
“I guess Charlie’s still in bed,” the redhead replied, “I haven’t seen hide ’ner hair of him all morning. Chris left as soon as it got light out, and Del’s in here with me.” He turned and walked back into the dining room.
Billie caught up to him just as he laid aside the H & K and sat down next to Del before a tall piece of equipment that had been bolted to the dining table with C-clamps. The reloading machine looked in passing like a drill press from Sears, but a second glance noticed the powder measure and the 9mm dies and a cylinder in the center where empty brass stood. Billie’s two boys were hard at work like a miniature assembly line: Del would prime each casing with a handtool, then pass them along to Bart where they were inserted in the press and the powder charge added automatically. Then, with a pull of the lever arm, the bullet was seated and the casing crimped to hold it. This was all done in a quick, practiced succession, and the plastic bin that caught the finished rounds was filling steadily.
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