DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
6:50 PM MONDAY
Sheriff Tal White cultivated despondency like others raised roses.
Functional depression wasn’t merely his hobby, it was his way of life. People laughed at him behind his back. He knew that, and it served only to sadden him. He had never married, as that would have contributed too much of a chance of happiness.
Single, he graduated Loston High, took a correspondence course in forensics and criminology (amazing what you could get for yourself over the computers these days!), and then lobbied - successfully - for the job of Loston’s sole Sheriff. He told himself he got the job because people secretly admired his fortitude in the face of despair.
In reality, no one else wanted a job that paid slightly over thirty thousand dollars a year and tended to result in lowered sperm counts through exposure to extremely high levels of boredom. Nothing ever happened in Loston.
At the swearing in, no one came but his parents and his little brother. "Just a perfect way to start the job," he said directly after the ceremony, and not even his family could tell if he was being sarcastic, self-pitying, or sincere. "Figures."
Tal had no real friends, and he preferred it that way. He knew very few people in the town, aside from immediate family, and didn't particularly want to know many folks. But he did know Loston’s most popular high school teacher. So when John Trent slumped through the front door of Loston’s sheriff’s office/prison, Tal jumped to his feet and said, "John." It was then that he noticed how unkempt John looked. Great purple bruises ringed his neck, and his pants looked wet with blood.
"What happened?" asked Tal incredulously.
The computer science teacher looked at him, grinned in a bemused "hellifiknow" way, and then passed out.
***
They walked out of the corn field, shaking loose twigs and angel hairs - the wispy golden threads that hung from the ripe ears of corn - from their clothing.
Without a word, they all agreed that they had been given the slip. Without a word, they went back to the house. Without a word they knew what they would do next.
They would search Devorough’s body for the key to his car, a Ford Expedition that was sitting in the driveway. Then they would get in and go to the town Sheriff. The man they had pursued would go there. He would have to. He would literally have no choice, as that decision would have been inculcated into him through countless years of subtle indoctrination. So they would go to the Sheriff, as well. They would find that man. They would torture him until he told them where Fran was.
And then they would kill him.
***
John wasn’t unconscious for very long. Maybe a minute and a half. When he woke, Tal had already laid him down on his stomach on a cot. Loston was small, so the entire Sheriff’s office consisted of one front office with a door in back that led to a small, three-cell prison. The cot was in the front room, next to the door to the jail area, wedged between a desk and a folding table that held a percolator. John moaned.
"Jesus, John," said Tal, interest warming his characteristically phlegmatic voice ever so slightly. "What happened to you?"
"Glass," answered John.
"I know." Tal held out a shard. Blood caked the clear surface like some evil stained glass window at a satanic church. "I got it out and bandaged you up. Not cut too bad, but it’ll bleed more if we don’t get you some stitches. I’m gonna call a doctor over here." He paused, then repeated his earlier question. "What happened?"
"I don’t know." John sat up. The wound at his back was a dull throb under a tight bandage. Of more concern were the jolts he felt at his ribs. Not broken, but severely bruised for sure. "I went to a student’s house and when I got there her father went berserk and tried to kill me."
"What? So he’s the one who put a piece of glass in you?"
"No. But when we were fighting these four lunatics showed up...." John’s body shook as a violent spasm wracked him, a convulsed shudder that sprang from a newly opened well of fear and disorientation. Chills racked him for a moment before he was able to get himself under control again.
"It’s okay, John." Tal gripped his shoulder. "What happened next?"
"They killed him." John took a deep breath and continued slowly, pressing out each word as though it cost him. "Devorough - that's the guy I went to see - he went insane, attacked me, then when he was about to kill me four people showed up and killed him. Then they tried to kill me, too."
Tal stood. He went to the percolator and poured a cup of coffee, bringing it back and handing it to John. John sipped it gratefully. It was hot - too hot to drink, really - but the heat was welcome, scalding his throat and serving as a proof that he was still alive.
"So these four fellas –"
"Two men and two women. I can describe them to you."
"In a sec. They say why they tried to kill you?"
"No. They asked where she was, and then I got away."
"She?"
John shrugged and took another sip of his coffee. "Damned if I know."
Tal eyed him for a moment. "We really ought to get you to the doc."
"I’ll be okay. I’m more interested in finding out what just happened."
"Why were you at this fella’s house, anyway?"
John stopped drinking. He looked at Tal, trying to decide what he would tell the droopy-eyed officer. In the end, respect and faith in the law won out over his desire to avoid sounding crazy, so he told the truth. "I...I thought I’d seen him before. Hell, Tal, I know I’d seen him before. Once when I was a kid, once when I was in Iraq. And he hadn’t changed a bit, not in almost twenty years."
Tal's expression showed that he didn't think much of that fact. "Some people don’t change that much."
"But this guy didn’t change at all. And when I saw him a few days ago, he was still the same. It’s been over thirty years, Tal."
Tal’s face grew hard. John could see the Sheriff didn’t believe him.
"It sounds nuts, I know. But get this: when I saw him in Iraq, I saw him die. He got blown to pieces." John looked down at his coffee, studying it as though its murky liquid might hold answers to the insane night’s unasked questions. One accusatory thought kept surfacing in his mind, though he did not voice it aloud: "Maybe I'm crazy."
As if in answer to his silent self-doubt, John heard the distinctive click of a gun hammer being pulled back. He looked up and saw Tal aiming his police special at him.
The look on his face hadn’t been disbelief, John realized in the milliseconds before acting. It had been that same hard look that shone in Devorough’s eyes.
Right before he tried to kill John.
Again, instinct took over. As Tal’s finger whitened on the trigger of his gun, John hurled his coffee at the man. The burning liquid hit Tal in the eyes, scalding them, perhaps permanently damaging them. John hoped not, Tal was - well, not a friend, exactly, but a good acquaintance. John taught Tal’s brother Joey some years back, and liked the whole family. But there was no time for friendly remonstrances. Tal was trying to kill him.
The sheriff shrieked as the brown spray hit him in the eyes and the gun went off. John heard the frightening zing of a bullet going by - like a supernaturally speedy wasp that had been lit on fire - and the wall behind him thudded.
John took advantage of the other man's momentary incapacity and jumped at Tal, who was still clawing at his eyes. He took the sheriff by surprise, boxing both the officer’s ears and then punching him in the crook of his arm. His aim was true: John hit the nerve ganglion near Tal's elbow, and the man's gun hand opened spasmodically. John caught the gun before it even hit the ground. In one smooth action it was up and pointed at Tal’s face.
The sheriff’s visage was frightful. Bright red tissue surrounded his eyes where the coffee had splashed. But worse than that was his expression, which looked as though he were fighting some horrible internal war with himself. He kept mumbling something to himself, and John couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
"Tal," he said. "It’s me. I taught your little brother, for Heaven’s sake."
Abruptly, Tal stopped mumbling and bent over to pull up his pants leg. An ankle holster hung there, like a dark vampire bat hanging from a tree, waiting only for the night before emerging to do bloody work.
"Tal. Tal, don’t touch that gun."
Tal popped the latch on the holster. John’s finger tightened on the trigger of the police special, but he couldn’t do it. This wasn’t a war, at least not like the one he’d been in. Nor was it a sudden attack. He had a moment to think, and discovered that he couldn’t just shoot Tal cold-bloodedly, however necessary it might be for John’s own well-being.
Tal, on the other hand, apparently could shoot John. As the ankle pistol came out, John threw himself through the door to the prison. Luckily, it wasn’t locked, or his trip might have ended then and there in a flurry of point-blank shots. But no one was in the cells tonight, so the door to the small empty cell-block was open and unlocked.
John landed on the hard concrete floor of the prison, a small cry escaping his lips as he landed on his tailbone, still bruised from his encounter at the Devorough place. He covered his head with his hands as gunfire ricocheted off the door and its frame.
Then the fusillade halted for a moment, and John looked around, taking stock of his surroundings. Three cells, no hiding places. One back door, but John knew that it was locked, double locked, and made of stainless steel. There were keys, of course, on Tal’s belt. But somehow John didn’t think the Sheriff would just relinquish them.
Click.
Click.
Click.
John heard the Sheriff reloading. He cocked his own gun, chambering the next bullet. "Tal, you’re my friend, but you come around this corner and I’ll kill you."
He didn’t know if he actually would or not. He doubted it.
He looked around again.
Click.
Click.
Nothing. He ran down the short hall to the back door, but as he expected, it was locked.
A heavy bootfall sounded behind him, and John faced the open door, gun aimed at it.
At the same moment a tinkle sounded, the bell above the front door ringing brightly as someone entered the Sheriff’s office.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
7:25 PM MONDAY
Tal turned. His thoughts were fuzzy.
Can’t think. Can’t concentrate. Can’t think.
He knew he held a gun. He knew he had fired it. But he couldn’t remember why.
Go into the prison. Use the gun again. Shoot something. What? Don’t know.
When the door tinkled, he turned.
"May I help you?" he said to the four people who entered. His voice sounded strange, even to him: emotionless; dead and dry as a petrified stick. He held the gun in front of him, regardless of what the visitors’ reaction might be.
The one in front - an older man - brought up a gun of his own. Tal saw the man smiling as the man fired. He felt a shell hit him in the chest and explode and heard the new arrival say, "We’d like to report shots fired."
Tal slammed into the wall next to the prison door. He slid to the floor, leaving a wide swath of blood smeared down the wall behind him. His eyes rolled back, and when everything went dark he wasn’t sure if it was because his eyes were closed or if he had just forgotten how to see.
Just the perfect way to end my day, he thought. Figures.
And he died.
***
John heard the report, heard the terrifying explosion, and heard something slam into the wall. He hurried to the door that led to the office, knowing that the slam he’d heard was Tal, probably dead now. One more corpse in a night already packed with death and fear. John hoped that Tal was close enough to the door that he’d be able to grab the Sheriff’s key ring and escape out the back, for he was sure that the crazies he had encountered at Devorough's house were responsible for the gunfire he’d just heard.
Who are they? he thought. But he had no time to find out now. The question would have to be answered later. If he survived.
He risked a glance into the office, darting his head through the doorway. Tal’s body lay within inches of him, but before he could grab the keys he saw them - the four crazies. They saw him as well, and opened fire. John ducked back into the prison as the shots hit the wall, micro-explosions ringing loudly. The wall buckled but didn’t disintegrate, its steel core holding up against the flurry of gunfire.
"Where is she?" The older man’s voice ricocheted into the prison like one more bullet, pinging against John’s ears harshly before imbedding itself in his mind.
"What the hell are you people talking about?" John yelled back. "Why are you doing this?"
He checked the gun he still held to make sure it was fully loaded. One shot already gone, only five remaining in the cylinder.
Another round of gunfire sounded, and bullets hit the door. One rammed its way through the frame, missing John by inches and leaving the doorway permanently open.
John could see Tal’s foot through the doorway.
The exit lay beyond the open door, on the other side of the hall. He’d have to cross their line of fire to get there. Assuming he could even get the keys without dying.
"Don’t play stupid, bit!" It was the blonde girl’s voice. "Where’s Fran?"
John paled. Thoughts of Fran and his date had flown from his mind in the course of the last half-hour. But now they rushed back, her name triggering intense fear - not for himself, this time, but for her. How was she involved in this?
***
In the office, Todd waited impatiently for the answer. Where’s Fran? The question hung over them like a guillotine, sharp and potentially deadly to their cause.
No answer came, and Malachi nodded. The four spread out a bit, heading for the door, guns ready. Todd noticed Tal’s feet begin to twitch, and was about to signal to Malachi that they had to take care of that problem.
Before he could, though, he saw their quarry’s hand poke around the doorframe. The hand ended in a pistol, and before any of them could move it had pumped every round into the air around them.
One of the bullets caught Todd in the neck. It exploded through his windpipe, and for a sharp moment he felt the strange sensation of his own blood filling his lungs, then he knew no more.
***
Click.
The gun was empty. John had heard a thump through the gunfire, the characteristic noise of a body hitting the floor. It was a noise John had heard before, but not one he had ever hoped to hear again. Unfortunately, tonight was refamiliarizing him with all sorts of things he had thought were behind him.
He hoped he’d dropped the crazy bastard who’d killed Devorough. John would equate that with personally killing the devil.
He dropped the gun and grabbed Tal’s foot, pulling the Sheriff’s body into the cell with him.
Tal’s foot was twitching. The reflex action gave John the willies, but he pried Tal’s ankle gun from the sheriff's dead hand. It was a 6-shooter, small but effective at close range.
John hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He focused on Tal’s belt then, searching for the keyring. He found it and yanked it off. A belt loop on the Sheriff’s pants snapped.
"Come out, bit!" The voice startled John. It was the older man. Not dead, then. John focused on the open doorway, wondering if he should risk running across now, or if he should pump another bullet or two into the room.
"Come out or it’ll go harder on you!" screamed the voice.
"You need to go home and tell them to increase the dosage!" John hollered in return. It was stupid, a stupid thing to do, giving away his position in the hall, but John had to give voice, to speak, to tell the lunatic in the office that he was still alive and planned to remain so.
By way of answer, a shot zinged in through the open door. John dropped and rolled away as the bullet’s impact showered bits of plaster into his hair.
He sat up.
And found himself inches away from Tal.
Who was sitting up as well.
Alive.
"Oh my God," said John. He watched in shocked horror as Tal reached for his gun. He was breathing, even though he had a hole punched straight through his chest. John could see blood pumping out of the meaty crater, as though circulating through arteries, then veins, returning to the place where the heart should be. There was no heart, though. It had to be gone, splashed against the wall of the office.
Tal, his eyes staring blankly into John, seemed to realize his gun was gone. He flung himself at John, going for him with his bare hands.
The movement snapped John into movement, and nearly snapped his sanity. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod," he said as he threw himself backward, crabwalking convulsively away from the dead man. Tal’s hands snapped like lobster claws only millimeters away from John’s foot.
John threw himself across the open doorway, expecting to be taken in mid-flight by a hail of bullets. He made it unscathed, running to the door.
He turned, and saw that Tal had made it across the doorway, too, on his feet, hands reaching out for John. Blood - his own - dripped from his hands in cascades, a macabre vision from the most dire chapters of the Bible seeming to come to life before John’s eyes.
John screamed, holding onto sanity’s last thread with a grasp that grew ever more tenuous. He brought up the gun and emptied it into Tal, blowing great bloody holes through the sheriff, who stepped back with each shot but didn’t fall. John almost wept with fear as he saw blood pour from each new wound, yet each new wound failed to topple the man who had converted to an undead monster from beyond nightmare.
The last bullet hit Tal solidly in the temple, snapping back his head and forcing the sheriff to take a single step back.
He stood framed in the open doorway to the office.
***
Jenna fingered her weapon silently.
What do I do now? she thought. Todd is dead.
The words ran bitterly through her head, almost a chant of confusion and despair. She had loved Todd for years, ever since she had met him, in fact. He was in love with her, too, and had told her so. They could not marry, they would never bear children. Attempting to bring more children into the world would be a fool's game, not to mention acting against their beliefs.
After all, if God had decreed that all must perish, then to bring a child to light would be sheerest blasphemy.
So no children. Only work, and toil, and the cause. And love. She cried, looking at his body, lying still and damp on the floor of the office of this hateful place. The weeping was silent, though, turned inward so only she could hear the wailing sounds of mourning.
I loved you, she thought. Go in peace, my darling.
Then Jenna raised her eyes from the body of her love and saw the man - the thing - in the doorway. She screamed and opened fire. It was the sheriff, not the one who had killed Todd, but the gunfire drowned out the pounding ache that erupted in her heart when she saw her love die. Todd was gone, but fire remained.
She screamed, and the scream came from the base of her soul, a primal cry to expunge the pain of her loss. Todd was gone, but the cause lived, and to serve it the things of this place must perish.
Malachi and Deirdre also opened fire beside her, their combined gunfire deafening in this confined space. But the noise was welcome music to Jenna, for as long as she heard the sing of the weapons, she could not perceive the cries of her heart.
***
John watched what looked like a hundred holes blast through Tal’s already wrecked body. The sheriff's face smacked wetly as low-caliber shots punched through it, his cheekbones slowly dissolving under the torrent of lead. A shotgun blasted, and his right arm came off at the elbow. Another, and his kneecap shattered.
And still he lurched toward John, using his one wrecked leg like a broken crutch, wobbly and inefficient...but still moving slowly towards him.
John turned to the door. It was locked, and he had no idea which was the right key. Tal’s ring looked to hold about thirty. He tried the first. Nothing.
Behind him, he heard Tal’s body hit the ground. He dared a look back, and saw that he - or rather, it, it had to be an it, no man, just a thing - was still crawling toward him, inch by inch, foot by foot.
John tried more keys. None of them worked.
Tal's face, no longer recognizable as belonging to his friend, leered up at him, a bloody pulp. Two or three remaining teeth seemed to grin a mad, ghastly jack-o-lantern smile at him, loosely hanging from exposed jawbones and pulped flesh.
And John still hadn’t found the right key.
Bloody fingers - two left on one hand and four remaining on the other - reached out towards John, pinching open and shut convulsively. John knew that if he fell next to Tal - no, it wasn’t Tal, it couldn’t be, this had to be something else - he wouldn’t get up again.
The broken fingers brushed against his leg, and John screamed. A strange mewling sound, like that of a kitten being slowly tortured to death, came from Tal’s wrecked mouth, the Devil calling for John’s surrender.
John kicked convulsively, knocking the fingers away. Disgust ran through his body like rats through a sewer, and he had to fight for control of his bowels. Tal almost grabbed his kicking foot.
Then one of the keys turned.
John pushed the door open and ran.
***
Deirdre heard an alarm sound.
He must be going out through the emergency exit, she thought.
Silent and dark, she hurtled through the door to the prison, Malachi and Jenna only seconds behind her. She turned the corner, and saw the sheriff, recognizable now only by his tattered remnants of uniform and the pieces of a badge that still clung tenaciously to his ruined torso.
He lay on the ground, scrabbling against the doorframe as the emergency exit swung slowly closed. He left bloody smears wherever he touched, painting crimson swaths like impressionistic sunsets across the sidewalk with his body.
The door shut, clicking against its metal frame.
The beast turned to them.
Deirdre looked calmly at it. She felt no horror at this moment, nor fear. The sheriff was just a thing, just one more obstacle standing between her and Heaven. So she calmly reloaded her gun and did her best to destroy the thing and send it back to the devilish place where it was born.
Malachi and Jenna joined her attack, their own weapons blasting at the beast's body.
Slowly, shredded muscle pulling and pushing against shattered bits of bone and cartilage, the sheriff pulled itself around. It began making its way toward them, its extremities ever-shrinking under their withering assault. Yet still it pushed to them, scraping against the ground with ruined legs.
Deirdre knew it would never stop until it was dead. When its arms and legs were gone, it would stay twitching, its trunk orienting on them. That was why they had to be so careful: death was not the end. It was just a horrifying change into something else.
The thing scraped toward them.
Malachi held up a fist, signaling them to stop. Deirdre ceased fire instantly, immediately reloading her weapons in preparation for the next conflict. Conflict was inevitable now, and would come more and more often as this longest of all nights - perhaps the beginning of an endless night for the human race - wore on.
Jenna kept firing, screaming at the tops of her lungs, yelling Todd’s name over and over. Malachi pushed the barrel of her gun down, slapping her at the same time. Jenna’s cries broke up jaggedly, hoarse, whispering gasps replacing them.
Malachi walked to the sheriff’s still-animated corpse. He pulled out his needler, the implement he had used on Casey, and thumbed the button, triggering the spire’s extension from its small housing. He jammed the spike into the base of the sheriff’s neck, hitting the button again.
The sheriff’s body went rigid, wisps of smoke curling from it as what was left of its brainstem fried in a curdling pool of cerebrospinal fluid and blood.
He had looked human.
Deirdre holstered her weapons and followed as Malachi reentered the front office. They pulled the door shut behind them, secreting themselves from prying eyes. She glanced out the glass window inset in the door and saw no one on the street.
"Will anyone come about the noise?" she asked.
He shook his head. "The whole town is probably closeted up in their houses. If the Controllers," he spit out the word like a venomous mass, "stay true to form, the whole town is going into lock-down."
"So people won’t come out, but we’ll have to be careful," she said, more for Jenna's benefit than for anything. The young woman looked as though she was hanging over an edge, the thin twine that was her sanity acting as her only slight support.
Malachi nodded and looked like he was going to say something more, when a scream jerked his gaze to the prison door. Deirdre looked there, too, and saw Jenna, her finger pointing into the office, terror leaving ghost trails across her face.
"He’s moving!" she shrieked.
Deirdre looked over and saw that, sure enough, Todd was twitching. The twitches, she knew, would rapidly become spasms as the brain rerouted its impulses through different parts of the body. Within seconds, nerves would be regenerated, control reestablished, and life would begin. But not life as they knew it. It would be a different, frightening life with a malevolent will.
Malachi quickly walked to Todd, jammed his still-extended needler at the dead man’s eye, and triggered the switch.
The needle hummed, puncturing Todd’s eye like a giant proboscis. The illusion was furthered when Todd’s eye seemed to deflate. Deirdre was startled for a moment until she realized that the needle wasn’t sucking up the viscous fluids of Todd’s eye. Rather, the intense electrical charge that the needler funneled through the spire was cooking the eye matter, burning it to a small lump of ash that sat at the hollow of Todd’s eye socket.
As always, Deirdre couldn’t pull her gaze away from the grisly demise of the creature. It was a child of Satan, most assuredly. Soulless, inhuman, yet so hard to kill. Only a direct hit on its brain stem or using the needler to fry its entire brain could stop it.
Sometimes, not even that.
She shook her head. Humanity was at the brink.
At last, Todd’s body went limp, rigid muscles relaxing, this time forever.
"He wasn’t - I mean, he didn’t –" Jenna was babbling in the doorway, her body shaking almost as convulsively as Todd’s had just a moment before.
Malachi was across the room in a flash, pocketing his needler. His hands now free, he slapped Jenna.
"No, he wasn’t," he said. "He wasn’t human."
***
Malachi’s hand stung from slapping Jenna. But he didn’t stop there. He grabbed the girl, curling his strong hands tightly around her upper arms. He shook her, banging her against either side of the doorframe.
Jenna cried out, the pain he inflicted apparently piercing the haze of fear and hurt that she felt.
"He wasn’t human," Malachi said again, and those words seemed to hurt her worse than the slap or the pummeling. He moved in closer to her, pulling her to him, switching his grip, cradling her head now with his hands, pulling her face to his. "He wasn’t human," he whispered.
"But I loved him," whispered Jenna. "I thought he was real."
"Believe not all signs, my child. For Satan shall have power. Yea, even enough to deceive the very elect."
Jenna sobbed and fell against Malachi, weeping out her pain against him, as was her privilege. He was the Father, the Brother, the High Priest, the Comforter.
She pressed into him, and Malachi pressed himself into her, molding his body to hers as he whispered words of comfort. She was pleasant to look upon, unscarred and unscathed by the deadly landscape of their true home, but he was starting to think he shouldn’t have let her come along. She was too flighty, too hysterical. He much preferred the silent and deadly manner of Deirdre.
He pushed even closer to her. His lips found her ear, and he said, "If you don’t shape up I’ll kill you without honor."
He felt her body stiffen in his arms as fear ran through her. It excited him, and a dull heat spread from his loins through his chest and burned dully in his heart. If he did have to kill her, he knew he would use her first, making her pleasure him in every way possible before sending her on to the next life of reward...or of pain and damnation. The choice of which realm she would inhabit in that next existence would be solely his, and that knowledge aroused him even further.
He felt alive.
He pulled away, looking into her eyes. The fear was still there, but she was getting it under control, he saw. Good.