A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

She swung the bat, but not at his head. Instead she slammed it with a heavy metallic clank against the jaws of the trap. As he screamed with the renewed agony and as his hands automatically reached for his injured leg, Al realized that she must have done this sort of thing before. Because now his head was completely unprotected and she was already into a second swing. And this one was aimed much higher.

  You’ve done it again, Carole! AGAIN! I know they’re a bad lot, but look what you’ve DONE!

  Sister Carole looked down at the unconscious man with the bleeding head and trapped, lacerated leg and she sobbed.

  “I know,” she said aloud.

  She was so tired. She’d have liked nothing better now than to sit down and cry herself to sleep. But she couldn’t spare the time. Every moment counted now.

  She tucked her feelings—her mercy, her compassion—into the deepest, darkest pocket of her being where she couldn’t see or hear them, and got to work.

  The first thing she did was tie the cowboy’s hands good and tight behind his back. Then she got a wash cloth from the downstairs bathroom, stuffed it in his mouth, and secured it with a tie of rope around his head. That done, she grabbed the crow bar and the short length of two by four from where she kept them on the floor of the hall closet; she used the bar to pry open the jaws of the bear trap and wedged the two by four between them to keep them open. Then she worked the cowboy’s leg free. He groaned a couple of times during the process but he never came to.

  She bound his legs tightly together, then grabbed the throw rug he lay upon and dragged him and the rug out to the front porch and down the steps to the red wagon she’d left there. She rolled him off the bottom step into the wagon bed and tied him in place. Then she slipped her arms into her knapsack loaded with all her necessary equipment and she was ready to go. She grabbed the wagon’s handle and pulled it down the walk, down the driveway apron and onto the asphalt. From there on it was smooth rolling.

  Sister Carole knew just where she was going. She had the spot all picked out.

  She was going to try something a little different tonight.

  Al screamed and sobbed against the gag. If he could just talk to her he knew he could change her mind. But he couldn’t get a word past the cloth jammed against his tongue.

  And he didn’t have long. She had him upside down, strung up by his feet, swaying in the breeze from one of the climbing spikes on a utility pole, and he knew what was coming next. So he pleaded with his eyes, with his soul. He tried mental telepathy.

  Sister, sister, sister, don’t do this! I’m a Catholic! My mother prayed for me every day and it didn’t help, but I’ll change now, I promise! I swear on a stack of fucking Bibles I’ll be a good boy from now on if you’ll just let me go this time.

  Then he saw her face in the moonlight and realized with a final icy shock that he truly was a goner. Even if he could make her hear him, nothing he could say was going to change this lady’s mind. The eyes were empty. No one was home. The bitch was on autopilot.

  When he saw the glimmer of the straight razor as it glided above his throat, there was nothing left to do but wet himself.

  When Sister Carole finished vomiting, she sat on the kerb and allowed herself a brief cry.

  Go ahead, Carole. Cry your crocodile tears. A fat lot of good it’ll do you when Judgement Day comes. No good at all. What’ll you say then, Carole? How will you explain THIS?

  She dragged herself to her feet. She had two more things to do. One of them involved touching the fresh corpse. The second was simpler: starting a fire to attract the other cowboys and their masters.

  Gregor watched as Cowboy Stan ran in circles around his dead friend’s swaying, upended corpse.

  “It’s Al! The bastards got Al! I’ll kill them all! I’ll tear them to pieces!”

  Gregor wished somebody would do just that. He’d heard about these deaths but this was the first he’d seen—an obscene parody of the bloodletting rituals his nightbrothers performed on the cattle. This was acutely embarrassing, especially with the Master newly arrived from New York.

  “Show yourselves!” Stan screamed into the darkness. “Come out and fight like men!”

  “Someone cut him down,” Gregor said.

  One of the other two from Cowboy Stan’s pack finished stamping out the brush fire at the base of the utility pole and began to climb.

  “Let him down easy, Kenny!” Stan yelled.

  “The only thing I can do is cut the rope,” the one on the pole called back.

  “Dammit, Al was one of us! Cut it slow and I’ll ease him down. C’mere, Artie, and help me.”

  The one called Artie came over and together they caught their friend’s body as it slumped earthward and—

  The flash was noonday bright, the blast deafening as the shock wave knocked Gregor to the ground. His first instinct was to leap to his feet again, but he realized he couldn’t see. The bright flash had fogged his night vision with a purple, amoebic after-image. He lay quiet until he could see again, then rose to a standing position.

  He heard a wailing sound. The cowboy who had been on the pole lay somewhere in the bushes, screaming about his back, but the other three—the two living ones and the murdered one—were nowhere to be seen. Gregor began to brush off his clothes as he stepped forward, then froze. He was wet, covered with blood and torn flesh. The entire street was wet and littered with bits of bone, muscle, skin, and fingernail-size pieces of internal organs. There was no telling what had belonged to whom.

  Gregor shuddered at the prospect of explaining this to the Master.

  Tonight’s murder of Al had been embarrassing enough by itself. But this ... this was humiliating.

  Sister Carole saw the flash and heard the explosion through the window over the sink in the darkened kitchen of the Bennett house. No joy, no elation. This wasn’t fun. But she did find a certain grim satisfaction in learning that her potassium chlorate plastique worked.

  The gasoline had evaporated from the latest batch and she was working with that now. The moon provided sufficient illumination for the final stage. Once she had the right amount measured out, she didn’t need much light to pack the plastique into soup cans. All she had to do was make sure she maintained a loading density of 1.3 G./c.c. Then she stuck a 3 blasting cap in the end of each cylinder and dipped it into the pot of melted wax she had on the stove. And that did it. She now had waterproof block charges with a detonation velocity of about 3300 M/second, comparable to 40 per cent ammonia dynamite.

  “All right,” she said aloud to the night through her kitchen window. “You’ve made my life a living hell. Now it’s your time to be afraid.”

  The Master’s eyes glowed redly in the Stygian gloom of the mausoleum. Even among the Old Line of the undead, the Master was fearsome-looking with his leonine mane, his thick moustache, jutting nose, and aggressive chin. But his eyes seemed to burn with an inner fire when he was angry.

  His voice was barely a whisper as he pierced Gregor with his stare.

  “You’ve disappointed me, Gregor. Earlier this evening you petitioned me for greater responsibility, but you’ve yet to demonstrate that you can handle what you have now.”

  “Master, it is a temporary situation.”

  “So you keep saying, but it has lasted far too long already. Besides our strength and our special powers, we have two weapons: fear and hopelessness. We cannot control the cattle by love and loyalty, so if we are to maintain our rule, it must be through the terror we inspire in them and the seeming impossibility of ever defeating us. What have the cattle witnessed in your territory, Gregor?”

  Gregor feared where this was headed. “Master—”

  “I’ll tell you what they’ve witnessed, Gregor,” he said, his voice rising. “They’ve witnessed your inability to protect the serfs we’ve induced to herd the cattle and guard the daylight hours for us. And trust me, Gregor, the success of one vigilante group will give rise to a second, and then a third, and before long it will be open season o
n our serfs. And then you’ll have real trouble. Because the cattle herders are cowardly swine, Gregor. The lowest of the low. They work for us only because they see us as the victors and they want to be on the winning side at any cost. But if we can’t protect them, if they get a sense that we might be vulnerable and that our continued dominance might not be guaranteed, they’ll turn on you in a flash, Gregor.”

  “I know that, Master, and I’m—”

  “Fix it, Gregor.”The voice had sunk to a whisper again. “I will be in this territory for three days. Remedy this situation before I leave or I shall place someone else in charge. Is that clear?”

  Gregor could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Removed? And to think he’d just made the Master a gift of the pregnant cow. The ungrateful—

  He swallowed his anger, his hurt.

  “Very clear, Master.”

  “Good. It is only a few hours until dawn—too late to take any action now—but I expect you to have a plan ready to execute tomorrow night.”

  “I will, Master.”

  “Leave me now.”

  As Gregor turned and hurried up the steps, he heard an infant begin to cry in the depths of the mausoleum. The sound made him hungry.

  Sister Carole spent most of the next day working around the house. She knew it was only a matter of time before she was caught and she wanted to be ready when they came for her.

  I wish they’d come for you NOW, Carole. Then this shame, this monstrous sinfulness would be over and you’d get what you DESERVE!

  “That makes two of us,” Sister Carole said.

  She didn’t want to go out again tonight but knew she had to.

  Her only solace was knowing that sooner or later it was going to end—for her.

  Gregor smiled as one of his assistants smeared make-up on his face. He would have preferred to have kept his plan to himself but he couldn’t use a mirror and he wanted this to look right. Scruffy clothes, a cowboy hat, a crescent-on-a-chain earring, and a ruddy complexion.

  He was going to decoy these vigilante cattle into picking on him as their next cowboy victim. And then they’d be in for quite a surprise.

  He could have sent someone else, could have sent out a number of decoys, but he wanted this kill for himself. After all, the Master was here, and his presence mandated bold and extraordinary measures.

  He checked the map one last time. He had marked all six places where the dead cowboys had been found. The marks formed a rough circle. Gregor set out alone to wander the streets within that circle.

  Miles later, Gregor was becoming discouraged. He’d walked for hours, seeing no one, living or undead. He was wondering if he should call it quits for tonight and return tomorrow when he heard a woman’s voice.

  “Hey, mister. Got any food?”

  As Sister Carole led the cowboy back to the house, she had a feeling something was wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she sensed something strange about this one. He wore the earring, he’d reacted just the way all the others had, but he’d been standoffish, keeping his distance, as if he was afraid to get too close to her. That bothered her.

  Oh, well, she thought. God willing, in a few moments it would be over.

  She rushed into the candlelit foyer but when she turned she found him poised on the threshold. Still standoffish. Could there be such a thing as a shy collaborator?

  “Come in,” she said. “Have a seat while I fetch Lynn.”

  As he stepped inside, she dashed upstairs, being sure to take the steps two at a time so it wouldn’t look strange hopping over the first. She went straight to the bedroom and began rubbing off her makeup, all the while listening for the clank of the bear trap when it was tripped.

  Finally it came and she winced as she always did, anticipating the shrill, awful cries of pain. But none came. She rushed to the landing and looked down. There she saw the cowboy ripping the restraining chain free from its nail, then reaching down and opening the jaws of the trap with his bare hands.

  With her heart pounding a sudden mad tattoo in her chest, Sister Carole realized then that she’d made a terrible mistake. She’d expected to be caught some day, but not like this. She wasn’t prepared for one of them.

  Now you’ve done it, Carole! Now you’ve really DONE IT!

  Shaking, panting with fear, she dashed back to the bedroom and followed the emergency route she’d prepared.

  Gregor inspected the dried blood on the teeth of the trap. Obviously it had been used before.

  So this was how they did it. Clever. And nasty.

  He rubbed the already healing wound on his lower leg. The trap had hurt, startled him more than anything else, but no real harm had been done. He straightened, kicked the trap into the opening beneath the faux step, and looked around.

  Where were the rest of the petty revolutionaries? There had to be more than this lone woman. Or was there? The house had an empty feel.

  This was almost too easy. Gregor had had a bad moment there on the threshold. He couldn’t cross it unless invited across. He’d still be out there on the front porch if the silly cow hadn’t invited him in.

  But one woman doing all this damage? The Master would never believe it.

  He headed upstairs, gliding this time, barely touching the steps. Another trap would slow him up. He spotted the rope ladder dangling over the window sill as soon as he entered the bedroom. He darted to the window and leaped through the opening. He landed lightly on the overgrown lawn and sniffed the air. She wasn’t far –

  He heard running footsteps, a sudden loud rustle, and saw a leafy branch flashing toward him. Gregor felt something hit his chest, pierce it, and knock him back. He grunted with the pain, staggered a few steps, then looked down. Three metal tines protruded from his sternum.

  The cow had tied back a sapling, fixed the end of a pitchfork to it, and cut it free when he’d descended from the window. Crude but deadly—if he’d been human. He yanked the tines free and tossed them aside. Around the rear of the house he heard a door slam.

  She’d gone back inside. Obviously she wanted him to follow. But Gregor decided to enter his own way. He hurled himself through the dining room window.

  The shattered glass settled. Dark. Quiet. She was here inside. Where? Only a matter of time—a very short time—before he found her. He was making his move toward the rear rooms of the house when the silence was shattered by a bell, startling him.

  He stared incredulously at the source of the noise. The telephone? But how? The first things his nightbrothers had destroyed were the communication networks. Without thinking, he reached out to it.

  The phone exploded as soon as he lifted the receiver.

  The blast knocked him against the far wall, smashing him into the bevelled glass of the china cabinet. Again, just as with last night’s explosion, he was blinded by the flash. But this time he was hurt. His hand ... agony ... he couldn’t remember ever feeling pain like this. And he was helpless. If she had accomplices, he was at their mercy now.

  But no one attacked him, and soon he could see again.

  “My hand!” he screamed when he saw the ragged stump of his right wrist.

  Already the bleeding had stopped and the pain was fading, but his hand was gone. It would regenerate in time but—

  He had to get out of here and get help before she did something else to him. He didn’t care if it made him look like a fool, this woman was dangerous!

  Gregor staggered to his feet and started for the door. Once he was outside in the night air he’d feel better, he’d regain some of his strength.

  In the basement, Sister Carole huddled under the mattress and stretched her arm upward. Her fingers found a string that ran the length of the basement to a hole in one of the floorboards above, ran through that hole and into the pantry in the main hall where it was tied to the handle of an empty teacup that sat on the edge of the bottom shelf. She tugged on the string and the teacup fell. Sister Carole heard it shatter and snuggled deeper under her mattres
s.

  What?

  Gregor spun at the noise. There. Behind that door. She was hiding in that closet. She’d knocked something off a shelf in there. He’d heard her. He had her now.

  Gregor knew he was hurt—maimed—but even with one hand he could easily handle a dozen cattle like her. He didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to go back without something to show for the night. And she was so close now. Right behind that door.

  He reached out with his good hand and yanked it open.

  Gregor saw everything with crystal clarity then, and understood everything as it happened.

  He saw the string attached to the inside of the door, saw it tighten and pull the little wedge of wood from between the jaws of the clothespin that was tacked to the third shelf. He saw the two wires—one wrapped around the upper jaw of the clothespin and leading back to a dry cell battery, the other wrapped around the lower jaw and leading to a row of wax-coated cylinders standing on that third shelf like a collection of lumpy, squat candles with firecracker-thick wicks. As the wired jaws of the clothespin snapped closed, he saw a tiny spark leap the narrowing gap.

  Gregor’s universe exploded.

  I’m awake! Gregor thought. I survived!

  He didn’t know how long it had been since the blast. A few minutes? A few hours? It couldn’t have been too long—it was still night. He could see the moonlight through the hole that had been ripped in the wall.

  He tried to move but could not. In fact, he couldn’t feel anything. Anything. But he could hear. And he heard someone picking through the rubble toward him. He tried to turn his head but could not. Who was there? One of his own kind—please let it be one of his own kind.

  When he saw the flashlight beam he knew it was one of the living. He began to despair. He was utterly helpless here. What had that explosion done to him?

  As the light came closer, he saw that it was the woman, the she-devil. She appeared to be unscathed ...