The Brotherhood of the Wheel (49 page)

“Let's roll,” he said.

 

TWENTY-THREE

“10-10”

Scode's Garage was lit up, as always, in the darkness of Four Houses, a Judas beacon, a false promise of aid and comfort in the night. Wald was sitting outside in his chair, beside the door to the office. He cradled a shotgun and was sipping a grape Nehi. The old, hissing AM radio in the office was playing Johnny Cash's “Ring of Fire.” Today's sweep had been a disaster because of the old witch, because of the one that had followed the Master back to Four Houses, and because of that damned truck driver. The Master would make them all pay tonight. Let them live another night—if they survived the shadows and the packs, tomorrow would find them in a world where everywhere was like Four Houses.

He took another sip of his soda, a simple pleasure, and relaxed, closing his eyes like a snake sunning itself on a rock. There was a crash and a clatter, and Wald felt the sour wad of acid in his belly hiss. He opened his eyes and looked toward the source of his irritation. Toby was in the garage bay. He was pushing trash from the floor of the garage outside through the open bay doors and had accidentally knocked over a metal toolbox. He wore a gun belt with an old revolver and a knife on it. He had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Hey, Wald,” Toby said, “are you still mad at me?”

“Shut up,” Wald said, and took another swallow from the narrow glass bottle of soda.

The heavy bass purr of a motorcycle engine could be heard heading west, toward the station. Toby stopped pushing the broom and looked in the direction of the lone headlight stabbing the darkness. “Is that the Master?” he asked.

Wald slowly lowered his Nehi as the light grew brighter and the engine louder. He leaned forward in his chair. “No,” he said, hesitantly, at first. “No, it isn't!” Wald stood, his Nehi bottle crashing as he leveled the shotgun.

Heck's bike tore into the parking lot of the garage like wrath itself, his metal Oni face mask reflecting the harsh light of the lot in its demonic grin. He fired on the gas pumps with his MP9, spraying a rain of tracer rounds at them. The pumps exploded in a column of brilliant flame, climbing high into the night sky. Wald fired as he flew backward from the blast. The glass walls of the garage office buckled and shattered in the wake of the fireball. Sizzling drops of gasoline rained down across the lot, hitting cars and the roof of Scode's Garage.

Toby unslung his rifle and ran out to find his brother in the hellish tableau. “Wald! Wald!” he screamed as he swept the rifle before him. He saw a figure walking toward him through the smoke and the fiery rain. It was Heck, walking slowly toward him, machine gun pointed toward the ground, his leering mask hiding his eyes in the wells of jumping shadows caused by the fire.

“The kids,” Heck said, his voice muffled by the steel and the cackle of the fires. “The college kids, where are they, asshole?”

Toby raised the rifle to his shoulder to fire. It was an awkward motion. Heck's machine gun came up smooth, fluid, like breathing. Toby closed his eyes in anticipation of the bullets ripping through him. There was a roar, and for a moment Toby thought the gas pumps were exploding again. He opened his eyes to see the man in the demon mask lying on the ground, his gun a few feet from him.

Wald stepped into view, his shotgun still smoking. He looked at Toby and shook his head. “Goddamned useless,” he muttered.

Toby smiled. “Thanks for saving me, Wald!”

“Shit!” Wald said as he kicked Heck's still form with his work boot. The biker groaned a little but didn't move. “I didn't give a shit about saving your miserable ass. You gave me a chance to drop him, dead bang. Fucking scooter trash, wreck my livelihood, will you?” Wald kicked Heck in the side, hard. Heck groaned a little more. “Looks like his leathers, helmet, and mask stopped most of the shot, but not all. He's alive. He's gonna wish he wasn't.”

The fire was still raging, but the rain of gas seemed to have stopped. Wald kicked Heck again and then grabbed him by one of his ankles. “Make yourself useful, moron,” he said to Toby. “Grab the other one. We're going to drag him inside.”

“What you going to do to him, Wald?” Toby said as he grabbed Heck's other ankle and they began to drag the biker across the asphalt toward the garage bays.

“Get me the blowtorch and I'll show you,” Wald said.

*   *   *

Lovina walked toward the Mother's house a few miles down the road from Buddy's—the burned house, the one with the chain-link fence and the
NO TRESPASSING
sign. It was dark when she reached the fence. A few stars were beginning to show themselves in the dark, cool night. Lovina grabbed the bar of the fence and swung herself over. She landed low and looked up into the growling maw of a shadow hound.

“Beat it,” Lovina said as she fired the tiny laser pointer in her hand at the hound's face. The shadow howled, smoked, and staggered away before melting into the night. Lovina stood and moved across the lawn toward the front door. “I hope you little suckers don't leave shadow poop all over the lawn,” she muttered.

She found the front door locked and knelt, slipping out her picks. A sense of déjà vu settled over her. This had all started with her picking Dewey Rears's apartment door. Was that a week ago? Seemed like aeons had passed. The lock was old and stiff, but it clicked. Lovina felt the tumblers give and the front door clicked open, a little too loudly for her taste. She slipped inside and clicked on her Maglite flashlight. The house smelled of smoke, burned plastic, and a faint, sweet-stale hint of something else—something that had gone bad. She closed the door and locked it, in the hope of not having uninvited guests to the party. The place had the feel of a seventies house, despite the much older façade. The carpet in the entry hall was pale blue industrial. Dark stains, drag marks, ran from the door into the dark. She moved along the hall carefully, quietly, each step measured, her breathing even, flashlight in one hand, her Glock in the other. She held them together, the way she had learned as a cop, sweeping each area to make sure it was empty before moving along. She scanned the stairwell to the second floor on her left with the light and the pistol—clear. She moved past the stairs. Two doorways—one to the right into a den, most likely, and one ahead into what was almost certainly a kitchen. She swept the gun and the light into the den, putting her back to the hallway wall, so that the kitchen doorway was on her left.

The halo of light from the flashlight swept the room. The carpeted floor of the den was covered with huddled Black-Eyed Kids, apparently slumbering. There were dozens of them, lying on top of one another, as if they had simply fallen there. More were crowded, sitting in a row, on the tacky plastic-covered old sofa, their hoodie-covered heads bowed like monks in prayer.

Her breathing caught a little and she quickly swept the kitchen door. More BEKs, at least a dozen more, slumbering everywhere—on the kitchen counters, on the floor, like a nest of rats.

Lovina used the wall at her back as a guide to slide farther, hoping she would find the basement door just around the corner. She holstered her Glock and reached back, slowly, carefully with her hand, half expecting to feel vise-strong hands grab her wrist and then the agonizing bite. She felt a cool, smooth doorknob. It turned easily. She swept the flashlight back into the den. In the pale wash of the light, the BEKs on the couch all raised their heads as one and regarded her with Stygian eyes.

“Shit!” Lovina had time to say as she went for her slung AR-15. In the bouncing circle of light, the universe had become a jerky, time-stop movement—angry, screeching, pale cherubic faces with maws of razor-sharp fangs, all moving at blinding, strobe-light speed, all launching straight toward her.

*   *   *

As night fell, the celebration at Buddy's quieted. The realization of what would likely be coming for them made everyone still and awkward with fear. They had defied the Master of the Hunt, and now his inhuman servants would come to do what his human hounds could not.

Those who could fight got ready to, armed with the gear that the trucker, Aussapile, and his allies had brought into Four Houses. Those who could not prepared to run ammo, treat the injured, or comfort and calm the infirm and the children.

“Where did my blasted pistol get to?” Dennis Cottington asked Barb as she pulled his blankets up closer to his chin. “I do believe that I gave it to that girl Julia,” he said.

Barb nodded and smiled her “everything is going to be okay” smile. “We'll find it,” she said. “You rest, Dennis. I have to go, but I'll be back to check on you.”

“Tell Aggie I love her, and I'm sorry I got shot and can't help her,” Dennis said, his eyes slightly damp, the tears hovering at the borders. “Not that she needs my help. Tell my beautiful girl to give the Jerries what for, for me, yes?”

Barb laughed and put something in Dennis's hand. “You see any Nazis you shoot them, okay?”

“Very good, Brigadier,” Dennis said, and saluted her.

There were about forty men and women ready to defend the roadhouse. Barb joined them, next to Carl. “Everyone is tucked in and has defenders,” she said. “We moved all the emergency lights and generators in there in case they decide to cut the power. How we've had power at all in this town all these years, anyway, is a mystery to me.”

“Good,” Carl said, and kissed her. “Okay, everyone. We've planned this out and we know what to do when that plan goes to hell, right?” The assembled group muttered agreement, nodded.

Steve Franco, the retired schoolteacher who had been stranded in Four Houses with his wife and kids for a little over a year, spoke up. “Carl, you think these things will really work?” he asked. “If not, this is going to be … well, a massacre.” He lowered his voice at the last, glancing in the direction of his boys. His wife, Ann, stood beside him, ready to fight.

Carl nodded. “You're right, but from what we've found out today there's a massacre coming all across the world in less than an hour. There are good people out there right now trying to stop it, maybe dying to stop it. Here, right now, this is our battle in that war. We're going to keep our people alive and safe, and we're going to destroy as many of the enemy as we can. This is our only chance of doing that, Steve, the only chance we've had in a long time. I say it's worth the risk.”

The temperature inside the bar dropped. Something in the silence of the vacant corners shifted, flowed. The shadow people began to appear everywhere, dozens of them, dozens upon dozens, stretching out of each sliver of darkness, grasping toward the terrified living, huddling against the light.

“This is it!” Carl shouted. “Keep them away from the kids and the seniors!” He turned to Barb and saw all he needed to see in her eyes. They kissed. It was just like the first kiss. Carl turned, holding his wife's hand, as Barb moved to cover his back. “Make the bastards pay for every one of us!”

The shadows fell, enough to devour even the memory of light.

*   *   *

Agent Cecil Dann felt the interminable discomfort of not having a plan, not having an idea how to solve the puzzle—hell, of not having all the pieces he needed to know what the damn puzzle even looked like. This was how he felt every damn time he heard the name Jimmie Aussapile. He checked his phone for the millionth time. No call back from the Justice Department's attorney. No call back from Aussapile or any of his freaky friends, no one hijacking his cell phone, nothing. He paced back and forth in the greenroom—the guest lounge in the studio of George Norse's TV show, “Paranormal America Live.” The studio audience was being warmed up by a series of video interviews Norse had done previously on the show and on his international radio program. Dann could watch all that on one of the large monitors in the lounge. On another monitor, he saw the promo for the show for the third time in the past hour. The network was pushing this broadcast and promoting the hell out of the fact that an infamous serial killer had made contact with the show.

Dann checked his phone again. He was hoping the Department of Justice's lawyer would give him the go-ahead to pull the plug on the show and confiscate the original tape, but Norse's network attorneys had been screaming about First Amendment rights, and the weasel from Justice was ducking for cover. He wished he knew exactly what was going on, but his gut told him it was a bad idea to do what a murdering psychopath wanted you to do, and this was exactly what the Pagan wanted to happen.

Dann looked at the clock on the wall: nineteen minutes until air time. “Typical,” he said. “The one time I want you to butt in you're nowhere to be seen.”

*   *   *

Ava dropped down into the basement of the house of the Maiden. She swept the flashlight around. The basement was empty—no monsters waiting to gobble her up, no BEK chrysalises or bloodthirsty shadows. The door that she and Agnes had escaped through swayed open in the night breeze. She had taken her time approaching the mansion, waiting until the attack on Buddy's had begun, then moving painfully slow, inches at a time, through the high grass. A pack of Black-Eyed Children had waited languidly near the entrance to the Maiden's home.

With only a few minutes remaining until eight, the pack had suddenly frozen for a moment and then sprinted off in the direction of the house of the Mother. It looked as if Lovina was in and keeping them busy, just as they had planned. That was good. Ava was no badass, like the Louisiana cop or even Agnes. She was a college student and a coward, she knew, regardless of Dennis's gun on her hip. Once the BEKs were gone, Ava moved quickly inside and made her way to the basement.

She moved to the capstone of the well. She carefully removed the skeleton. Some of the bones clattered, falling apart as she lifted them. She shuddered and laid the other bones down as gingerly as she could. “Sorry,” she whispered. She took out the small pry bar and looked around the stone for a weak point to begin. She found as good a spot as any and began to work on the crumbling stone. After a few moments, a small chunk cracked and came loose. Ava pulled it free and tossed it aside. A shaft of painfully white light hissed from the opening, like what Agnes had shown Ava in her basement. Ava reached toward the light and felt a force pushing her hand away. A crashing flood of images and memories swarmed her mind. Other voices, other lives. She looked at the bones on the floor and knew her name. Ava struggled to pry more of the stone loose, and more light erupted. The whole basement began to fill with the harsh light. The pre-set alarm on Ava's cell phone began to chirp. It was the end of the countdown; they were out of time. The TV show was starting. Ava thought of her dad, her brother, even of her aloof mom watching, being devoured by some faceless, timeless thing.