Forever never ends

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?" Virginia Speerhorn pressed a polished thumbnail into her palm until the pain helped her control her anger.

"Didn't think it was any big deal. Just a report of attempted assault. And you've got plenty to worry about as it is, what with Blossomfest and all."

"I might be worrying about finding a new police chief, Mister Crosley,” Virginia said into the phone. She couldn't use her withering glare, but she could drip the sarcasm. “You know I want to be informed about such matters."

"Sorry, Mayor. I hate to bother you at home-"

"You're just afraid you'll piss me off. Don't want to rile the Virgin Queen, is that it?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. Virginia knew Crosley was rubbing his fat belly with his free hand.

Blossomfest was barely nine hours away, and she wanted to appear fresh and vigorous in front of tomorrow’s crowds. Even though she enjoyed the iron grip she kept on Windshake, she hadn't completely ruled out a run for state office. Crosley had called shortly before midnight, interrupting her wardrobe reverie.

"And now you have some missing persons reports?" she said, prompting his attention away from his gut.

"Uh, yes ma'am. Kyle Emerland, for one. You know, that bigshot developer?"

"Of course I do.” She made it a habit to know all the big shots.

"His assistant called in about seven o'clock. Said Emerland missed a board meeting and a dinner date with some out-of-town investors. The assistant said Emerland never misses a board meeting. No answer on his cellular phone, either."

"When was he last seen?" Virginia was glad that the local paper was a bi-weekly and wouldn't have an edition out until after the weekend. And Dennis Thorne at the radio station would hold any story if he was afraid somebody might give him a bad job reference. No negative publicity until after Blossomfest.

"The assistant says he was planning to visit a fellow named Chester Mull this afternoon to discuss a business proposal. Mull lives out on the top of Bear Claw."

"That’s outside the town limits. Have you contacted Mr. Mull?"

"No signal on his phone, either. I sent a black-and-white up there to check it out, even though it was county jursidiction. Officer found an overturned vehicle, but it wasn't Emerland's. Belonged to a man named DeWalt. No sign of any people on the premises, though. Just the truck. I ran the plates, and it checked out as Mull's."

"Something sounds fishy. I presume you're still searching.”

"Yeah, but we've only got three men-I mean, officers — on duty. Two are keeping watch downtown over all the setups. Everybody else has the night off because of having to patrol Blossomfest tomorrow."

"Call in a couple. I'll authorize the overtime. Who else is missing?"

Virginia hoped this didn’t turn into an epidemic. Most missing persons showed up the next day with a sheepish grin and a hangover, or sometimes were traced to motels that rented rooms by the hour.

"A Mrs. Tamara Leon," Crosley said. "Teaches down at Westridge. Her husband says he hasn't heard from her all day. He tried the university and all their friends, but nobody's seen her. Whereabouts unknown. Plus there's a high school kid. But he's a regular. Likes to take little trips, if you know what I mean. Drugs."

Virginia allowed herself a sigh of relief. At least those two were nobodies. She wondered if there was a connection between them and Emerland. It seemed unlikely.

"Concentrate on Emerland, and keep an eye out for the other two. But they're strictly back burner for now.”

"Yes, Mayor," Crosley said. "Oh, and there's one more thing."

She listened as Crosley explained the case of the mysterious Melting Man, the one that had "disappeared," leaving behind only some dirty clothes and a Red Man cap. By the time he had finished, Virginia decided that she was definitely going to have to find a new police chief.

"I'm not in the mood for games, Chief. Call me if you get something."

"But I saw it… uh… good night, ma'am."

She hung up the phone and thought for a moment. Three people missing in one night, when Windshake usually might expect one every six months. Something was going on that was beyond her control. She hated that feeling. She wondered if it would dampen Blossomfest, then decided it wouldn't. She wouldn't let it.

She went to check on Reggie, to make sure he had made his eleven o'clock curfew. Surely he understood how important this weekend was to her. She almost wished his father hadn't died, but he'd been deadweight anyway, holding her career back. The only thing he'd ever done right was giving her Reggie.

She could see from the dark crack under Reggie's door that his lights were off. She knocked lightly. He was old enough to have his privacy respected. He didn't answer. He must have already been asleep.

"Sleep well, my angel," she whispered, and then headed for her own bed.

Nettie hummed "Amazing Grace" at her desk in the church vestry. She felt as if she were glowing, like the Madonna in those Renaissance paintings. She hadn't felt so wonderfully alive since she had gotten saved at age fourteen. Now she had been saved again, this time from loneliness and unrequited attraction.

Maybe it’s even… yeah, you can say it: LOVE.

The day with Bill had been wonderful, her wildest fantasies come true. He had touched her, held her, taken her. His smell clung to her skin, a strong and masculine odor of sawdust and clean sweat. She tingled under her dress as she thought back on their tumble in the clover.

She was having a hard time concentrating on the computer layout she was doing for Sunday's church program. She'd push her mouse to drop in a clip-art Jesus and then her mind would take off and Jesus would end up over in the birthday announcements. And when she typed "Windshake Baptist Welcomes Blossomfest Visitors," the event came out as "Bosomfest" and then "Blosomfset." She would be here all night if she wasn't careful, and she didn't plan on being here all night. Because Bill was coming to her place later, before he started his volunteer shift providing security for the Blossomfest arrangements.

She was high, brushing God's clouds with her mind. She thanked the Lord a thousand times for bringing Bill into her life and heart. She was afraid that Bill would feel guilty afterwards, that he would think she was some kind of wicked woman out to sap his strength and turn him from God. But when their eyes had finally opened after that searing hot explosion, they had looked at each other for a full minute without speaking. Then Bill said "I love you" in his deep, honest voice, and she could tell he meant it.

She replayed the words like a reel-to-reel tape, over and over. And she was still hearing them when Preacher Blevins’s feet crept across the floor. She spun in her swivel chair to face him. She wasn't going to let him sneak up and put his hand on her shoulder again.

He looked down on her, his lightbulb head brightened by his beatific smile. "Burning the midnight oil for the Lord, Nettie?"

"Finishing up the program, is all," she answered, watching as his dark vulture eyes did their cursory crawl over her body.

He grinned his beaver grin that now seemed sinister instead of friendly. "Fine, my child. Fine. Ought to have a big crowd this week. And next week, with Easter coming up. It's an important time for the Lord."

Nettie wondered if the preacher knew that Easter had originally been a pagan fertility holiday. Thinking of fertility made her glad she was still taking birth control pills, even though she hadn't had a sex partner in over a year. In the heat of the moment, neither she nor Bill had mentioned condoms. Nor, heaven forbid, disease. She found herself blushing, thinking of rubbers in church.

"Your cheeks are pink, my child," the preacher said, stepping close so that he was standing above her. "What thought is in your head that brings the devil's shade?"

"Oh, just a minor sin, Preacher. Hardly worth feeling bad about, but when you're in the House of the Lord-"

The preacher raised a beneficent hand. "I know, child. We humans are weak. We fall short of the perfection and glory of God."

He touched her knee with a hot, moist hand. His breath smelled of copper and blood, a hunter's breath.

Bill’s love gave Nettie courage. She decided it was time to confront him. "Preacher-"

He leaned closer. "Tell me your sin, my pretty one."

She arched back in her chair, trying to shrink away from his leering face.

"My sin is silence," she said, her teeth clenched. "I didn't speak against something I saw was wrong.”

"But the Bible says ‘Judge not, lest you be judged also,’" he said, lowering his voice. The rafters settled in the vast quiet of the empty church, as if the night was pressing heavily upon it.

She hesitated, wondering how to put her doubts into words. "It's about the money, Preacher."

"Money?" His eyes shifted like well-oiled ball bearings.

"The missing money. Only one person had access to it before I started working here. Only one person could have taken it."

"I told you, child-"

"I'm not your child, either. I'm a child of God, and you're a far sight from God."

"What are you talking about?" His face creased with confusion, breaking its practiced calm.

"It has to be you taking the money, Preacher. There are just too many discrepancies to laugh them off as honest mistakes. I've discovered ten thousand dollars that have fallen through the cracks just in the last year."

"Oh, my child, my child, the devil has put lies in your sweet little head, cast visions in your bright eyes," Armfield Blevins said in his smooth preacher voice.

She heard the slight sibilance of snakiness in his delivery. God, had she been blinded by this deceiver all along? Had they all?

"I've been hoping that I was wrong,” she said. “But I can't fool myself any longer. It's eating me up inside.”

She drew back as he smiled at her. Blevins’s hand clutched her knee as he loomed over her, his form somehow made larger by the way he seemed to soak the shadows from the corners of the vestry.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness," he said without emotion.

"And thou shalt not suffer false prophets," she answered. The church would be torn apart, but Nettie knew that God would heal the congregation and make them stronger through the trials and tribulations. And she would make certain that Mister Blevins had his trial. In the court of humankind, that is. God would pass the final judgment elsewhere.

"There's plenty for both of us, Nettie. It's part of His plan. Part of my plan."

The preacher's right hand rubbed her knee and his other one began lifting the hem of her skirt. "For both of us," he repeated, voice husky. His breathing was harsh and shallow and fast.

"No." She shrank away.

"Hush, my child,” The preacher’s raw breath was on her cheek. “Armfield forgives you. You know not what you do."

"Preacher, what in the hell do you think you're doing?" She was cold inside, dead as stone.

"Why, saving you from Lucifer's fire, Nettie," he whispered. "You have gone astray, and I must bring you back into the fold. I'll show you the path of righteousness. But you must bow to my will. You must open up and let me inside."

Now his hand was under her skirt, on her bare thigh. She twisted away and tried to stand. His face purpled with rage and he tightened a fist around her hair, pinning her to the chair. His eyes leered with cruel promises.

"Harlot.” He jammed his free hand under her skirt. "I smell the devil on you. I've seen the devil in your eyes. I've seen you flaunt your temptations before me. You're an abomination in the eyes of God."

Nettie strained to push him away, but his lean body was leveraged against her, his knees pinning her legs and trapping her arms between their bodies. He had the strength of a demon. He yanked her head over the back of the chair, forcing her lower and exposing her neck to his frantic lips and slathering tongue. She could only stare at the ceiling, her arms trapped against his chest as he lifted her skirt to her waist.

His face was above her, wrenched and distorted and beet red. Through her shock and horror, Nettie realized that if Satan walked the earth, this was the mask he would wear. A mask of cruelty and mockery, eyes aflame with rancid lust, his breath a foul, soul-stealing wind. As she struggled, she closed her eyes and prayed to God to deliver her from evil.

A low voice filled her ears. "Uhmmmm…"

The preacher froze. At first Nettie thought he had moaned, calling out in a fit of possessed passion. Then the voice came again, from the interior of the church.

"Uhmmmmm… feeel…"

The preacher's taut-skinned head swiveled, eyes wide with fresh fear. His clawing hand slightly loosened in the tangles of her hair. She held her breath, waiting for a chance to break free, her heart hammering like a dove's.

The voice came again, louder, from the opening where the dais led into the vestry. "Uhmm-feel…"

Nettie couldn't see who it was because her head was still trapped against the chair. But she could see the preacher's face turning ash gray as if he had seen a ghost. He released her.

The preacher backed away from Nettie and spun to face the door. His hands were out by his sides like a gunfighter in a showdown. His slacks dropped around his ankles from the loosening of his belt. Nettie lifted her head and doubted herself for a second time that night.

Because she didn't believe what her eyes were screaming at her.

Amanda Blevins moved across the room toward her faithless husband. But Amanda was only a small piece of whatever the thing was, as if random bits of her features had been pressed into a dismal green clay. It had Amanda's henna red hair, but the styling had wilted, leaving damp straws. Her sharp nose protruded from the face- God, can that be a FACE? Nettie thought-like a curving thorn.

Amanda's clothes were torn and hung from her body in rags, and her flesh was in damp tatters as well. Her skin looked like old meat that had aged in a basement and grown moldy. As she moved, finger-sized chunks of her slid to the ground, leaving a slick trail on the floor as she approached the preacher. One sagging, flaccid breast swung free from her ripped blouse and dangled like an overripe fruit. Nettie's stomach knotted in revulsion and she tried to vomit, but her stomach wouldn't obey.

Nettie didn't know what was worse, the thing’s mouth or its eyes. The eyes were glowing, deep green and translucent, as if rotten fires burned inside the watery skull. But the mouth — the mouth opened, gurgling and vapid, and sharp tendrils curled out like a nest of serpent's tongues from a pulpy den.

Then it spoke: "Uhmmm… feel… Uhmfeel… kish…"

The mouth sprayed viscous lime-colored drops, and Nettie could smell Amanda now. It was the stench of corpses, of graveyard rot and bad mulch, of stagnant puddles and tainted melons. Nettie tried to rise, but her limbs were thick, limp noodles and all she could do was watch in helpless fascination.

"Kish… shu-shaaa… Uhmmfeel," Amanda said.

The preacher backed away, his devil mask now turned white. Sweat glistened on his high forehead. His jaw locked open in horror as Amanda closed in on him. He staggered, his pants around his ankles tripping him, and he fell against the wall.

Then the thing that had once been Amanda was upon him, sliding down onto the preacher with a mushy, wet sound. Her liquid flesh flowed over him and the inhuman mouth bent to his face. Nettie heard his muffled cries as he joined his wife in unholy union.

Then Nettie's muscles stirred to life and she pulled herself from her chair. She bolted across the floor, her shoes slipping on the slimy trail that Amanda had left. As she reached the vestry door, the preacher's voice clearly pierced the air in a final litany.

"It burns… it burns," he whimpered.

Amanda had tilted her soggy head to the ceiling, swamp suds dribbling from her vacuous mouth. " Shu-shaaahhhh," the monster sprayed to the heavens before dropping its face once again to the preacher's.

Nettie ran into the unlit sanctuary, banging her knee against the pipe organ. She prayed to the Lord to shine on her from the darkness, this darkness that ruled the earth, that rose in thick fogs around the edges of her mind and threatened to swallow her into the belly of madness.

Because hell had unleashed its demons, the Apocalypse had arrived, and she wondered if she had the faith to stand. For the first time since she had been saved, she wondered if faith alone would be enough.

Robert turned off the television. He couldn't concentrate on the basketball game. He'd put the kids to bed and tucked them in with lies, hoping he'd done a good job of hiding his worry. He walked into the kitchen and stared at the telephone, silently begging it to ring, debating another call to the cops. He looked at the owl clock they’d received as a wedding present, its hands as dusty as their marriage.

It was nearly midnight. He balled his fists and wrestled the urge to punch the refrigerator. He longed to feel the pain flare up his arm and to pull his bloody knuckles from the dented metal, to hammer the idiotic appliance for standing there slick and mute while his wife was missing. He wished he could break himself in half as punishment for driving her away, because he knew it was his fault.

Suppose she’d had enough and couldn’t face another of his temper tantrums? Robert couldn't really blame her. All because his guilt was chewing his intestines from the ass-end up. All because he should have been there for her, should have talked and confessed and opened his heart and asked for the forgiveness he knew she would have granted.

What if the unthinkable happened? That dream of hers, the one she’d tried to tell him about. He’d only half listened while she related it. Something about the mountain eating them all. Maybe it was some kind of prescient view of an accident, maybe she’d driven off the road or fallen in a river or been suffocated or murdered or…

Don't even think about it. But her goddamned Gloomies Forget that clairvoyant crap. Well, if Tamara could see the future, why had she married such a worthless piece of rat baggage?

But she’d been right about her father. And when Kevin broke his hip. If she is dead, and you never got a chance to say you were sorry, then how are you ever going to live with yourself?

He was reconsidering battering the stupid refrigerator because he couldn't reach inside and rip his even stupider heart out, couldn't hold it to the light over the sink as it dripped its cheating blood, couldn't watch it take its last undeserved beats. He couldn't, because of the kids.

"Daddy?"

Robert turned, his fists balled. Ginger rubbed a sleepy eye, clutching a stuffed frog to her chest. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

"What are you doing out of bed, honey?" He relaxed his hands and knelt to her. She looked so much like Tamara.

"Had a bad dream." She stood there sniffling in her flannel circus pajamas as he hugged her.

"It's okay now. Let me tuck you back in, and you can tell me all about it if you want."

"I want Mommy."

"Mommy's still not home, sweetheart. But she will be, soon."

"Not if the Dirt Mouth eats her."

"Dirt Mouth?" Robert almost grinned, but his daughter's serious green eyes stopped him.

"The Dirt Mouth in the mountains." She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were something she had seen in a nature program on television.

"Honey, there's no such thing-"

"Mommy said you have to trust your dreams. Because dreams are nature, and nature never lies. And the Dirt Mouth was in my dreams. And Mommy was on the mountain with it."

"Dreams are just little tricks the brain plays on us while we're asleep. Games to help pass the night while we’re resting."

"Where's Mommy, then?"

"Just… out somewhere, honey."

"Out with the Dirt Mouth. And it’s going to eat the whole mountain, Daddy. It wants to eat everybody and all the trees and things."

Robert stroked Ginger's hair and held her to his chest. "It's just a bad dream, honey. Let's get you back to bed, and in the morning you'll see that Mommy will be home and the sun will come up and there won't be any mean old dirt mouths around."

He lifted her and carried her back to bed.

God, she's growing so fast. Blonde and gorgeous and bright eyed. She's going to be sensitive, just like her mother. She has a wonderful imagination, too.

Just like her mother.

He tucked her under the blankets and kissed her forehead. He couldn't help it. He had to know. Just in case. "Where was Mommy, honey? In your dream, I mean?"

"On the mountain, with the bad people. The barefooted mountain. Where the Dirt Mouth is, and the green light."

She yawned, then her tiny eyelashes flickered as her eyelids relaxed.

"Sleep tight, sugar. Daddy will make everything better."

"‘Kay, Daddy."

He turned off the light. Her voice came from the darkness.

“Daddy, what’s a shu-shaaa?”

“Shu-shaaa? I don’t know, honey.”

“It’s scary.”

"Don't you worry," he said to the dark bed. "Nothing bad can happen to you. Not while I’m around."

He found that lying was easy, once you got used to it. He started to sing “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and was on the third round of masters and dames when Ginger fell asleep.

He went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette and wait.

Nettie prayed.

She asked the Lord why He had allowed her to trip over that little round headstone that was really only a rock, the marker for an ancient, anonymous grave. She should have seen it gleaming like a white-capped tooth under the grinning curd of the moon. But she had run in a panic, out of the side door of the church into the dark graveyard. And she had been blind with fear.

What purpose could the Lord have in breaking her ankle? And she was scared to call for help, because help might come in the hideous form of the preacher's wife.

Or the preacher himself, standing there in the glow of the vestry lights with his pants around his ankles and his eyes as deep as devil pits. Maybe if she could reach the parsonage, maybe if Sarah were home, maybe if she could crawl…

It was only forty yards. But the pain was a ring of dull fire above her foot and she had to pull herself along by digging her hands into the turf and dragging herself forward a few feet at a time. As she slid, the earth sent its small stones digging into her hip and the grass tugged at her skirt. She was only a dozen yards from the church when she heard the sounds.

At first she thought it was a burst water pipe, or a wet wind cutting through the rags of the treetops. Then she saw them, shadows shuffling out of the forest at the edge of the cemetery. She was about to call out, thinking they could help her.

But who would be walking around the cemetery on the dead edge of midnight?

Then she saw their eyes. Three pairs of fluorescent orbs, dancing in the dark like fat fireflies. It was more of them.

More of whatever Amanda Blevins had become.

Nettie bit her tongue so she wouldn't scream and a seam of bright pain flashed across her mouth. She grabbed her crippled leg with both hands and rolled over, trying to swallow her whimpers of agony. She huddled behind a huge marble slab, pressing against its cold smoothness. The inscription on the headstone, "William Franklin Lemly, 1902–1984," was carved in dark relief against the moon-bathed alabaster. Bill's grandfather.

"Help me, Bill," she whispered, her cheek against the slab. The three figures stepped- “stepped” wasn't the right word, they’re FLOWING — into the moonlight, and Nettie saw the green pallor of their flesh. Their heads made her think of wax fruit dipped in motor oil.

They flowed over the grass-covered bones of the dead as if they were dead themselves, with that same moist slogging that Amanda had made while entering the church, a dribble of mucus and gelatin. She recognized two of them, Hank and Ellen Painter, parishioners of Windshake Baptist who lived out on Stony Fork. The third was too rotten to be identifiable. It was sexless beneath its ripped and rotten clothing.

The three approached the light of the church door like wise men come to see a miracle image. Nettie peered around the stone as they passed, certain that they would hear her heart hammering. But their radiant eyes stayed fixed on their beloved church.

Nettie watched them stumble up the stairs, mashing together as they all tried to go inside at the same time. They fell into the church and moaned in wet voices, singing praises to or raising curses against whatever god they now followed.

Nettie clawed her way across the grass, thinking of it as hair, the scalp of an earth that sweated dew and breathed the wind. A bright orange spear of pain flamed up her leg. She crawled behind a tall monument topped by an angel that held a harp and gazed toward heaven. Nettie rested her back against it, careful to keep the monument between herself and the church, and looked toward heaven herself.

Lord, what wonders you have wrought, she prayed. If this is the End Times, please give me the strength to endure Your plagues. If this is the first trumpet note, then may all seven of Your angels blow in their turn. Thy will be done. Please forgive me, Father, but I'm going to try to live. Because I kind of liked the way my life was going before hell gave up its demons. So forgive me for being human, but I'm not quite ready to give You my ghost. Amen.

Through a shrub twenty yards away, she looked wistfully at her car sparkling in the asphalt parking lot under the security light. But the car was a straight drive, and she couldn't operate the clutch because of her shattered ankle. Her best hope was to reach the parsonage and phone for help.

Assuming that either Sarah was home or the door was unlocked. Assuming that Sarah wasn't one of them. Assuming Nettie covered the open stretch of graveyard without being seen by the creatures. Assuming she didn't pass out from pain before she reached the front porch.

She clenched her jaw and wriggled on her belly like a serpent sent out of the garden.

Emerland unlocked the gate. The chain-link fence was topped with razor wire, designed to put second thoughts into the minds of would-be thieves. He considered fleeing for the darkness that hung on all sides of the compound. But the Mull geezer still had the shotgun, and Emerland could feel its blunt power throbbing anxiously somewhere behind him. Plus, to be honest with himself, all that talk of green-eyed plant people and mountain-eating Earth Mouths had put him on edge.

Though Emerland had seen the strange people along the road, he still thought Mull and DeWalt were nuts. This was the twenty-first century, for God's sake. Science had pretty much squashed any prospect of monsters or ghosts or vampires rising out of the ground. And aliens had become plastic cliches because of their overuse by hack fiction writers and low-budget movie producers.

But good old human lunacy was a reliable constant, a proven horror that spanned history. And Emerland was positive that he could rely on Old Man Mull to do the unpredictable.

He turned back to the trio, flinching against the beams of the Mercedes’s headlights. Chester, DeWalt, and the flaky psychic babe were black shadows against the yellow brightness.

"There you go," he said. "I just hope the security guards don't swing by."

But there were no security guards. The company that had brokered his construction company's insurance had insisted on around-the-clock protection because of the dynamite. Emerland had agreed in writing, but had never seen the point in wasting money on security. Who gave a damn if somebody stole something or if the whole place blew to hell if you had insurance that would cover the damage?

"Now unlock the dynamite shed," grunted the skinniest shadow, the one with the shotgun.

Emerland didn't bother arguing. He led the way past the metal hulks of bulldozers and cement mixers and stacks of fat-grooved truck tires to a small shed at the back of the compound. DeWalt carried the flashlight that Chester had found in Emerland's glove compartment, but the moon was so bright in the clear sky that they didn't need it. Emerland fumbled with the lock in the plywood door, cursing himself for being such a control freak that he needed a key to everything that had Emerland Enterprises stamped on it.

Then the lock popped and the door swung open with a rusty groan of hinges. DeWalt stepped inside with the flashlight. Emerland felt the gun barrel in his back and followed DeWalt.

"Do you know how to use this stuff?" Chester asked DeWalt.

"Sort of. I read the Anarchist Cookbook back in my younger days. You need a blasting cap, fuse wire, an electrical detonator switch. And some of those."

He pointed to the stack of small, paper-covered rods that were in an open crate on a shelf. "How many does it take?" DeWalt asked Emerland.

"How the hell do I know? I'm a developer, not a demolition man," Emerland said.

"Shut your rat hole, Emerland," said Chester. "Grab two dozen. Pass some to Tamara, here."

Emerland watched as Chester filled his overall pockets with the heavy sticks.

"Hey, DeWalt, you overeducated Yankee, why don't you read what it says under the red letters there?” Chester said, pointing to the warning written on the wooden crate. “Then, whatever it says not to do, just do it. That ought to make some sort of snap, crackle, and pop or another."

"Chester, you're an idiot savant," DeWalt said.

"I don't take kindly to the ‘idiot’ part, but I'll take that other fancy word as some sort of praise."

"If I remember right-and you'll have to forgive me, because my brain was a little souped up back in those days-then you attach the wire to this detonator and then to the blasting cap. This button sends an electric charge through the wire that heats up the stuff in the cap, then-"

"Fucking fireworks,” Chester said. “Sets off the rest of the dynamite."

"Well, technically, this is TNT, not dynamite."

"What-the-hell-ever. As long as it makes a bang."

Emerland stepped back from the door, seeing that the two men were so intent on collecting the TNT that they didn't notice him. He glanced at the creamy-skinned blonde. Damn, she was good-looking. If only circumstances were different, he wouldn't mind having her in his hot tub on Sugarfoot, popping the cork on some Dom Perignon. He wondered if insanity was contagious.

"Um, guys,” she said. "The thing’s getting hungrier. I've got a feeling that we better move before the sun comes up."

Emerland's arousal shriveled. He tried to slink behind a broken motor grader.

"Not so fast, scumbucket," Chester said without turning. Emerland's feet locked. He passed the time by looking up the red mud slope of the clear-cut mountain to the shining tower of Sugarfoot Condominiums. It was beautiful against the starry sky, a man-made testament to the power of dreams. He wished he were there now, behind one of the tiny lights among the plush carpet and clean satin sheets and filthy-rich tourists. Away from grubby madmen and this sweet-cheeked Nostradamus.

They were walking back to the car, the woman and DeWalt clutching armfuls of dynamite, when something stumbled against the fence. Emerland heard the thin jingle of wire, then turned and saw the fruit of nightmares.

It had once been a woman, he could tell that much, because its stringy hair fell like soggy bean sprouts over dripping breasts. The eyes glowed with deep, irradiant longing as its pale fingers hooked the metal links. "Shu-shaaa… kish… treeeez…"

Had the sounds come from that thing's raw wet mouth that gaped too widely to be human? Emerland was studying the vaguely familiar cheekbones and the wide skull that shone like pallid cheese in the moonlight. He suddenly recognized her- no, IT, not HER — as one of the aerobics instructors at Sugarfoot. One that he had shared several rather private workouts with.

No.

This wasn't happening.

Emerland was still looking at the face, looking for the woman who had once worn that skin before… before the Earth Mouth-zombiemaker-worldeater came.

Then the face disappeared as the thunder of Chester's shotgun shredded the thing’s upper torso into a rain of pulp.

"They're out there. I see them coming," Tamara said in the sudden dead calm that followed the explosion.

Tamara led the way as they ran to the Mercedes. Emerland was frozen to the spot, unable to rip his gaze from the quivering stump of the creature that now sagged to the ground, leaving a viscous trail of fluid on the fence that shimmered in the moonlight. Then he regained the use of his legs and dashed to the car, passing the others and sliding behind the driver's seat of the Mercedes.

"Now do you believe?" DeWalt asked from the backseat. Emerland nodded.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Chester said.

Chester didn't even have to threaten him with the shotgun this time.