Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 38

(1)

In the minutes before the first explosions the crowds on Corn Hill and Main Street had reached maximum density. Thousands upon thousands of tourists thronged the streets, milling in numbers that made last night’s Mischief Night celebration seem like a rehearsal. There was laughter and music, shouts and screams as kids in costumes chased each other through the swarm. No one cared that the sky was heavy with storm clouds—if it rained, it rained—and the early darkness really jazzed the Halloween mood.

The Halloween Parade was just starting, the balloons and bands waiting their turns on the staging area of the High School track. The big floats with their orange-and-black paper flowers and faux funereal drapings pulled onto Corn Hill one at a time while the first band played the theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Baton twirlers dressed like scarecrows spun their flaming batons high into the air and pirouetted before catching them behind their backs. Acrobats costumed like Renaissance jesters cartwheeled and flipped along the sides of the Grand Marshal’s limousine. Actors from classic TV horror shows waved to the crowd.

Above the town the flocks of shapeless night birds circled in slow patterns, watching everything, waiting for blood to perfume the air, drawn by the dead smells that mingled strangely with the vital scent of the people below.

Within the crowd itself certain figures moved slowly, often at odds with the flow, occasionally with it, sometimes just watching from the black mouths of alleys or through the opened windows of parked cars. Most wore costumes; all wore masks that hid their pale faces and fiery red eyes. Beneath their masks they licked their red lips and waited for the word, watching as the herd of prey thundered by unaware.

Ruger and Lois came out of the back of a store on Main Street and walked hand in hand toward Corn Hill. He wore nothing more outré than an expensive suit—black, single breasted, with a white shirt and red tie. Nothing ostentatious, just elegant—something Ruger never had been before. Lois was poured into a tight red silk dress that clung to her in ways that drove Ruger nuts. She’d put in some time on her hair and makeup and she was a stunner. Lois had added one little touch that Ruger loved—a small diamond tiara that was nestled into her dark curls. She looked every bit the red queen that she was.

Since he’d turned her, since he’d taught her to drink and to hunt, Lois had come alive in ways no one could have predicted. She was every bit Ruger’s match for vicious intensity, and he loved her for it. Really loved her—something Ruger had never let himself feel. His red queen.

They strolled along without hurry, waiting for the word, and behind them came a phalanx of others. A quarter of Ruger’s army was seeded throughout the crowd; more walked with him. The rest were positioned all around town—at the Hayride, on the campus, in the movie theaters, strolling the side streets that saw the heaviest traffic of trick-or-treaters. Those that walked behind Ruger and his queen were the elite, the sharpest of them, the most indulgently vicious. The fun-loving ones handpicked by Ruger. When spectators saw them all walking toward the parade, they laughed and fell into step, thinking it was part of some kind of entertainment.

That made Lois laugh, and anything that made Lois laugh made Ruger happy. He started waving to other partygoers to come and join them.

“The more the merrier,” he said and gave Lois a kiss. She pulled him close, tilted up both their masks and tore his lips open with her fangs. The smell of blood was so intoxicating that he wanted to take her right there and then. He bit her back as they walked, and no one noticed, no one saw. Their wounds opened and bled, and closed as they licked and sucked at each other as they walked.

Somewhere away to the southeast there was an explosion, but it was almost lost beneath the weight of the music and shouting. A few people looked up at the sky, searching for lightning or fireworks.

“Here it comes, baby,” he said to Lois, who hissed with joy.

When the second explosion hit, nobody ignored it. The whole brick front of the Pine Deep Fire Company seemed to leap up into the air just as the Grand Marshal’s limo was passing it, and then everything inside the station exploded outward in a massive fireball that seemed to lunge at the crowd. Costumes instantly ignited, windows on the other side of the street blew apart, and glass daggers slashed through the crowd. The paper flowers on the floats caught fire. All of this within the space of a second.

Ruger raised his left hand, fingers splayed, and every one of his people stopped amid the terror and panic to watch him. Ruger looked at his watch and then snapped his fingers. As if commanded by that snap the three bridges that connected Pine Deep to the surrounding towns exploded. And Ruger’s army attacked.

(2)

When the Bone Man left Frank Ferro at the farm, he flowed like wind back to the hospital, resuming his perch on the roof, flanked on either side by a line of crows. From there he saw the first of the explosions, long before the fall of night, and he understood now the subtlety of Griswold’s plan. There was no way to stop the Red Wave.

“No way in hell,” he told the crows.

(3)

A few minutes before…

“Hey…kid?” Newton said, touching Mike lightly on the arm. “You said that you can sense evil? I mean, are we talking some kind of supernatural spider-sense here?”

Val shot him a look.

“No, I’m not being flip. If something’s coming, if Griswold and all these vampires are about to attack the town, can Mike give us some kind of early warning alert? I mean…do we have time to try and sound an alert, or evacuate the town?”

“I don’t know how it works,” Mike said. “I don’t know how to turn it on and off. I mean…I feel it all the time, it feels like ants crawling all over me and I know, in some weird way that I can’t explain, that that means that there’s evil around.”

“So you do have a spider-sense.”

“Newt,” Val warned.

“I don’t know how to…” Mike waved his hands around, “to filter it. It seems to be coming from everywhere. It started after I, y’know, came back. I wanted to ask the Bone Man what to do, but he was gone.”

“Mike,” Weinstock said, “you told us that you think you died out there, that you were gone for at least half a day. You do know that this is impossible, right? You’d be brain damaged in minutes. You’d have cell breakdown and—”

Mike shrugged. “I was dead. I was out of my body. When I came back to my body I was ice cold and I couldn’t move. I actually think I was in whatchacallit? Rigor mortis.”

“And, what? You just got better?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what happened.” When no one said anything, Mike added, “Okay, I know that sounds ridiculous because this is such a normal world where nothing weird ever happens. It’s not like we have ghosts and vampires and werewolves here in sunny Pine Deep.”

“Kid’s got a point,” Newton said to Weinstock.

“Well, if that’s the case, then what does that make you? A zombie? I mean…human beings don’t just shrug off rigor mortis. I thought you were supposed to have a degenerative bone disorder as a dhampyr.”

“You sound like you’re pissed off that I’m alive, Doc.” Mike almost looked amused.

“Oh hell, it’s not that. Believe me, kiddo, I’m happy as hell to see you walking and talking, but I just want to understand it.”

“Get in line,” Mike said. He gave his face a vigorous rub with both hands. “God!” he shouted, “how do you think I feel about this? Yesterday I found out my mother was a vampire! A vampire! Then I find out my father is not only a vampire but also a werewolf and the worst mass murderer in history. He’s personally killed thousands of people. Not by sending an army like Hitler—he turned into a monster and killed them himself. Then I find out that I’m not even exactly human and that if I make it through the next couple of days then I’m going to die in just a few years. But wait—it gets worse. Yesterday I freaking well died. I lay down and stopped breathing. Do you think I’d make something like that up? Do you think it makes me feel special? I’m a freak. Look at my eyes, for God’s sake! Do you think that’s normal? You’re adults, you’re all smart…why don’t you try and understand that?” He kicked the guest chair halfway across the room, then stomped over to glare out the window, his face a match for the furious storm clouds.

As if in agreement thunder rumbled overhead so loud and sudden that it shook the hospital, rattling the windows.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s already too late.”

Val took a step toward him. “What do you mean?”

Mike turned from the window and the fiery rings around his eyes were as bright as a welder’s arc. “Mr. Newton…you asked me if I could sense what was going on so we could prepare. That kind of just got flushed down the toilet.”

Another shockingly loud boom rattled the windows.

“That wasn’t thunder,” he said, and as if to emphasize his words they could all see the plume of fire and smoke that rose from just north of town.

The third explosion knocked out the lights.

(4)

Vic’s plan for the opening event of the Red Wave was meticulous. Ten seconds after the power plant blew, the TV and radio stations went next, then the phone company. Some of Ruger’s sharper soldiers were detailed to toss Molotov cocktails into the backs of the news trucks, and among the first victims to be torn down were the reporters doing stand-ups along the parade route. Some fragments of footage got out, but everyone was in costume and nothing would make sense, no matter how many times the techs back at the regional offices ran the playback. The cell towers were next on the list.

By the time all that was happening, at least one tourist in fifteen was feeling the first effects of the massive doses of the psychedelic drugs in the candy. Confusion was a tool, and Vic was a master craftsman.

(5)

Magician Rod Leigh-Evans was having a bad night. The motor on his big electric table saw conked out during dress rehearsal and the whole trick had to be scrapped, which sucked because it was the centerpiece of his act. That meant that he had twelve minutes to fill with no major routines. He rushed home to get some of his older, less exciting tricks out of his garage. Stuff the crowd had probably seen a hundred times, but it was all he had left.

It didn’t matter that his assistant, the Incredible Wanda, had called him from an ER in Abington where she was having her foot stitched up following what she called “a bathroom misadventure.” Wanda declined to explain what that meant.

Stuck for an assistant, Leigh-Evans badgered one of the Festival staff to take Wanda’s place. The only staff member not assigned to something that couldn’t be switched was Chris Maddish, a young man hired to translate for a group of Japanese tourists whose plane was delayed in Chicago. When Leigh-Evans explained that Chris would have to go on as the Incredible Wanda there was one hell of an argument. Two hundred dollars later Maddish was squeezed into Wanda’s dress and wig. All things considered, Leigh-Evans thought, the kid looked better as a sexy woman than Wanda ever did; but the bribe money meant that the magician was now doing this gig for free.

When the show started, it was a rolling disaster. Some of the scarf tricks were so old the material was disintegrating during the performance, so he tried to sidestep into shtick as if being the world’s worst magician was all part of the show. The audience looked uncertain because he had started well and you can’t change a theme after you’ve set the expectations of the audience.

The rabbit he pulled out of the hat peed on his cummerbund—which at least got a laugh out of the audience, though he was pretty sure they weren’t laughing with him. Then he segued into a trick that at least promised a nice visual—one of the appearing dove tricks. Doves were pretty and they didn’t pee on you.

The trick here was to have the Incredible Wanda hold a wooden platform that was an inch thick and thirteen inches square, blow up a balloon, place it in the center of the platform, do some hand waving, and then pop the balloon to reveal the dove. All very clever, all pretty easy, but with popping the colorful balloon and the serenity of the cooing dove, it had very nice sounds and visuals.

The crowd, already restive, barely paid attention while Leigh-Evans ranted through his patter and did the hand gestures, but halfway during the trick Chris dropped the platform. The sound of it hitting the stage silenced the crowd, but also drew their complete attention. None of them had ever seen a magic act as overwhelmingly bad as this. The magician was horrified because of what was inside the platform.

He started again, his voice breaking on a couple of the lines in the patter and his hand gestures looking a bit less assured. When he popped the balloon and cried, “Voilà!” the crowd stared at the dove.

Instead of cooing and flapping its wings, the dove flopped dead onto the stage, rolled once, and then fell off the platform into the popcorn cup of a seven-year-old girl. Who screamed.

“Well,” the magician thought as the crowd started screaming, “at least it can’t any worse.”

All of this took place on a small stage in front of the town’s electrical power substation, which then blew up.

(6)

Deep beneath the mud and muck of the swamp, Ubel Griswold felt the explosions vibrate through the bones of the earth. He opened his mouth and howled with delight as the Red Wave began.