The Influence (33 page)

The storm outside had gotten crazy. Lightning and thunder were nearly constant, and powerful wind was forcing water into the kitchen through the small space of open window. This was flash flood weather, and she would have turned on the outside lights to see if any water was running through her property if she hadn’t been afraid that she might see something else. 

Turning around, she faced her mixing bowl on the table, where half of the dough she’d made was still resting. Not knowing what to do with it, only knowing that she was not going to bake it, she considered putting it in a plastic bag and dumping it in the garbage. But, on the off chance that the dough could become animated even without baking, she took the bowl to the sink, filled it with water, diluted its contents and dumped the runny mixture down the drain, letting the faucet run for a couple of minutes afterward to make sure it was gone. 

There was no way she’d be sleeping tonight, and she definitely wasn’t going to bake anything, so she went back out to the living room and once again picked up her sketchbook. Even out here it was hazy and smelled like burnt cookie, but she was not about to open any doors or windows, so she turned on her swamp cooler for the first time since September, hoping its stale summer air would help dissipate the smoke, and settled down to draw.  

She couldn’t draw, though. 

And she remained on the couch with the pad on her lap, pencil in hand, listening to the storm, waiting. 

**** 

“
Hector
.” 

Father Ramos jerked awake at the sound of the voice. Lightning flashed, and in that brief second, he saw a figure in the corner of his room, a thing of darkness and dirt, a travesty that was neither dead nor alive but somehow both. Thunder followed instantly, only the thunder sounded like a giant’s growl, and in its aftermath, the thing in the corner moved forward, closer to the bed. 

Father Ramos threw off the covers and scrambled off the opposite side of the mattress. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he feared this apparition more than any other, though he knew not why. 

“Hector.”  

Hugging the wall, he tried to calculate whether he could make it to the door before the hulking figure blocked it off, but it was nearly impossible to determine with the quickflash bursts of lightning in the otherwise total darkness. The thing was closer to the other side of the bed, though, and that put it slightly farther away from the door than he was. 

Taking a chance, Father Ramos ran for the doorway, made it through, and shut the door behind him, hoping against hope that those dirt hands would not have the manual dexterity to turn the knob. 

Keeping a wary eye out for other surprises, he hurried toward the safety of the chapel, turning lights on along the way.
Would
the chapel be safe? he wondered. He had been accosted there before.  

“Hector.” 

The voice was in his head, not in the air. 

Entering the chapel, he saw immediately that it was empty. He
should
be safe here. After all, he was doing God’s will. 

But he
wasn’t
doing God’s will. 

Father Ramos shut his eyes tightly, trying to will away the headache that was squeezing his brain. 

He locked the door behind him and started down the aisle toward the front entrance in order to make sure it was locked. Halfway there, he slowed. Then stopped. On the wooden floor was his shadow…only it was not his shadow. Stretching out in front of him was the elongated silhouette of what looked like a hunchbacked ape with the neck of a giraffe. The sight would have been comical if it had not seemed so
wrong,
and Father Ramos took one step to the left, one to the right, trying to see if it was the angle of the light that was distorting his shadow. 

It was not. 

Someone— 

something 

—was knocking on the double doors in front of him, the sound not particularly loud, but obvious in its regularity against the randomness of the storm, and he hurried over to make sure they were bolted. His twisted shadow rose from the floor to the door at his approach, confronting him, but he ignored it, checking the doors, grateful to confirm that they were indeed locked. 

The knocking continued unabated. 

“Hector. Let me in.” 

Jumpy, he turned around, certain that he would see that mud man behind him, but the chapel remained empty save for himself, and he walked slowly back up the aisle toward the altar, glancing from left to right, alert for any sign of movement, ready for anything. But nothing appeared, and though the knocking continued, and the voice— 

“Hector. Let me in.” 

—occasionally spoke to him, he ignored them both. 

Kneeling before the crucifix at the front of the church, bowing his head, he prayed for guidance.  

**** 

Cameron Holt jerked awake just as the gunshot that would have taken his life was fired. The sound of the shot morphed into thunder, and he sat up in bed, inspired by the nightmare, suddenly knowing what he had to do. 

Lightning flashed, and the thunder that followed was so loud that it shook the house. He hobbled over to the window, wincing in pain with every step. As he’d hoped, Jorge was standing sentry in front of the smokehouse. Cameron saw no other men with him. Whether they had run off, were sleeping or were dead made no difference to him. The important thing was that Jorge was alone, and before that situation changed, Cameron hurried into the hall and down the stairs, moving as fast as he could, though it took every ounce of determination he had not to cry out in anguish. 

Once downstairs, he went directly to his gun case and pulled out his favorite weapon, his Dirty Harry gun, the .357 Magnum he’d bought because of the Clint Eastwood movie and that he’d never been able to use in the way he wanted to. Ammunition was in the drawer below, and he sorted through the boxes of bullets and magazines until he found what he needed. 

He walked outside. 

It was raining hard, and he probably should have put on a raincoat or, at the very least, a hat, but he walked out barefoot in his long johns. Jorge was standing before the door of the smokehouse. Guarding it, Cameron supposed. For some reason, the cholo was facing the barn, not the house, not the drive, and for that he was grateful. He seemed tense, his body language that of an animal awaiting a predator attack. In the flash of lightning, Cameron saw glistening rain pouring down the foreman’s jacket and could not help smiling. Now Jorge really
was
a wetback.  

The sound of the storm hid the noise of his own awkward movements, but Cameron approached cautiously, aware that even a slight turn of the head by the other man could destroy any advantage he had.  

Both hands were holding the Magnum. 

He was soaking wet, and the mud beneath his feet made him think of walking through shit. Reaching the edge of the smokehouse, he stopped. He was close but not too close, and he raised the gun. “Jorge!” he shouted. 

The foreman turned around. 

And Cameron blew his head off. 

There was a sound from the smokehouse, an inhuman wail loud enough to be heard even over the clap of thunder that exploded at precisely that second. The thunder faded away, but the wailing continued, a keening that grew louder and higher as Jorge’s body fell into the mud. Cameron covered his ears with the index finger of his left hand and the butt of the Magnum held in his right, the sound boring painfully into his brain before growing thinner and then fading away as it moved beyond the range of human hearing. 

Instantly, the storm stopped. It was as though a faucet had been turned off, and while clouds continued to blot out the moon and stars, no rain came down, no lightning flashed, no thunder pealed. 

Cameron peered through the darkness. Without the aid of the lightning, he could barely see the smokehouse through the gloom. But this was his big chance, and if he was going to dispose of the body of that
thing
inside, he needed to do so quickly.  

He was afraid to go into the shed, however, afraid even to touch the outside of the door. Burning down the building was still his best option, he thought, but had all the rain inoculated it against fire? Still looking toward the smokehouse entrance, he tried gathering his courage…only he had no courage to gather. For all he knew, that wailing was continuing, moving now beyond the range of dogs’ hearing, a call by the monster to others of its kind. 

Cameron backed away from the building before some mysterious power struck him down, or his mind was taken over as Jorge’s had been, or a group of ranch hands emerged from the barn to attack him. 

The barn. 

Cameron frowned. Why had Jorge been staring at the barn? 

He decided to see for himself, and, making a wide circle around the front of the smokehouse, still holding tightly to the gun, he limped through the dimness toward the structure. After the tumult of the storm, the calm was eerie. There were no animal or insect sounds, not even the chirping of crickets or cicadas. But he thought he heard his own name, spoken low, and he looked around the darkened yard, wishing he had brought a flashlight.  

“Cameron!” 

It
was
his name, spoken louder this time, and he realized that it was coming from the corral. 

That was where Jorge had been looking, not the barn. 

Either his eyes were getting used to the dark, or the weak diffused porchlight from the house just happened to fall at the right angle, because when he glanced toward the corral, he thought he saw movement. Hobbling as quickly as he could through the still-squishy mud, he was almost immediately able to make out the lines of the fence. In the center of the open space beyond, in sharp contrast against the pale dirt, he saw figures. Men. Three of them. One said his name again, and all three seemed to be waving their hands, though whether they were beckoning him closer or warning him away, he could not yet tell. His grip on the gun tightened. 

Three steps further, and he could see who they were. Cal Denholm. Jim Haack. Joe Portis. He was shocked, though he probably shouldn’t have been. The other ranchers had obviously snuck onto his property under the cover of night and storm, no doubt intending to destroy the body in the smokehouse, and he was filled with an optimism and sense of hope that he hadn’t experienced since before all of this started. Did they know that Jorge was dead? They had to have heard the shot, though the storm was at its height at the time and the sound could have blended in with the thunder. Without Jorge to guard the smokehouse, they would have a clear crack at the monster, and if they had enough gasoline or turpentine, they might even be able to set the building on fire despite all of the rain. Excited, Cameron made his way toward the corral gate— 

And a steer blocked his way. 

For a moment, he thought it was an accident, a coincidence, but then the animal stopped, turning to look at him, and he saw the awareness on its face. Another steer walked purposely over from the direction of the barn. There was a slight greenish glow about the animal, as though it were a radioactive character in a cartoon, and in that instant he understood the situation. The other ranchers were
not
trying to sneak over to the smokehouse. They had tried that, but they had been caught, and they had been herded into the pen by…cattle.  

Cameron backed up slowly, ready to fire if need be. Behind the first steer, Jim was waving his hands in a pantomime that he did not understand. Cal was whispering something he could not quite hear. 

Another steer had appeared from somewhere. Cameron glanced around, looking for more, but saw no others. For all he knew, these three were all that was left of his herd. 

Lightning struck nearby, and he jumped at the decibel-busting thunder that instantly followed. 

It was as though the thunder and lightning had jarred something loose in his brain. The situation before him was suddenly clarified, and he looked back toward the smokehouse, which appeared to be lit from inside, lines of light seeping out from between cracks in the wood.  

Now he remembered. He was supposed to
protect
the angel.  

How could he have gotten so far off track? 

It didn’t matter. He was once again on course, with the program, and he looked into the eyes of the steer blocking his way. The animal stepped aside to let him pass. 

“Thank God,” Cal said. “You’ve got to get us out of here. These fucking—” He stopped, seeing something in Cameron’s eyes. There was fear in his voice. “You’re not going to let us go, are you?” 

Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked overhead. 

“No.” Cameron said, raising the gun. 

“You don’t want to do this…” 

“Don’t worry,” he promised. “I’ll take you out clean.” 

And he did. 

THIRTY ONE 

When Ross awoke, just before dawn, his laptop was open on the table, the screen shining brightly. He didn’t remember leaving it on, didn’t even remember seeing it when the storm woke him up in the middle of the night, but, then, he’d been tired. 

Walking over to turn off the laptop, something nagged at him, something that was wrong. 

Wait a minute. 

Why
was the screen bright? 

His tired brain was just beginning to sort through and process the information it was receiving, and he realized that even if he had left the laptop on, the screensaver would have kicked in. Then, a half hour after displaying a photo of sunrise at the Grand Canyon, the laptop would have gone into sleep mode, and the screen would have gone dark. 

He approached the table warily, leaning over the back of the chair to see what was being displayed. It was a list of email messages that had been sent since last night, and to his amazement there was an entire page of them. Sitting down and reading over the subject lines, he saw that they were from various companies in the aerospace industry.