The Dead Town

Chapter 14

As Teague took them on a quick tour of the house — the residence of Hank and Dolly Samples — he brought them up to speed regarding what happened at the country-music nightclub earlier in the evening. Considering his certainty about the extraterrestrial identity of their adversaries, Carson wondered how she and Michael would be able to convince these people that their interpretation of events was incorrect.

The men of the Riders in the Sky Church were distributing guns and supplies of ammunition at key defense points throughout the house, fortifying and barring most windows with spaced two-by-fours that were screwed to the interior casings, allocating compact fire extinguishers that they routinely carried in their pickups and SUVs, and taking every precaution they could think of to make the house as much of a fortress as possible.

Meanwhile, the womenfolk were in the kitchen and dining room with the younger children, turning mountains of groceries, brought from other less defendable houses, into pasta salads, potato salads, and casseroles. These could be stored in both the kitchen and garage refrigerators, ready to feed on demand everyone here gathered.

Three portable generators, fueled with gasoline, were being tied into the house’s electrical system to ensure refrigeration and microwave-oven availability if Rainbow Falls lost its power supply. Because the heating-oil tank had been filled only two days earlier, they could keep the furnace going for at least a month.

No one expected this war of the worlds to last anywhere near a month. Either the Lord would support humanity in the quick and utter defeat of these obviously godless invaders from a far world ruled by Satan, or this must be Armageddon. If this was in fact the final conflict, it would surely be swift because ultimate Good and ultimate Evil were clashing head-on, at last, and the latter could not endure more than a single pitched battle with the former.

After Teague delivered them to the spacious and busy kitchen to meet Dolly Samples, he went away to rejoin the guards patrolling the perimeter of the property. Although Dolly was industriously rolling out one disc of dough after another, making pumpkin pies—“End Times or not End Times, a well-made pumpkin pie lifts the heart and gives us fortitude”—she insisted on getting mugs of coffee and homemade sugar cookies for them.

Carson noticed that to one side of Dolly’s pie fixings lay a.38 Colt revolver. The other women working in the kitchen were talking with one another about the recent events at the roadhouse but also sharing such mundane things as fine details of recipes and their children’s latest escapades. They also had serious weapons near at hand: a SIG P245, a Smith & Wesson Model 1076, a Smith & Wesson 640.38 Special pocket revolver, a Super Carry Pro.45 ACP from Kimber Custom Shop.…

They exhibited determination but no desperation, concern and diligence but no obvious fear. There were preparations to be made, work to be done, and busy hands meant busy minds that had no time for dread or despair.

The coffee tasted fabulous. The sugar cookies were divine.

“There were two kinds of these hateful creatures,” Dolly explained as she returned to her pie dough. “The first looked like people we knew, and you would think they would be the worst because they’re deceivers among us, children of the Father of Lies. But when they revealed their true nature by their actions, we could deal with them. They tried to shoot some of us, but we were faster on the draw, and they could be killed. It takes some real good shooting. One well-placed bullet, even point-blank, won’t do it.”

As she picked up a disc of dough and conformed it to a pie pan, Dolly glanced at a framed painting on the wall above the dinette table: Jesus in white robes and cowboy boots, riding a horse that was rearing dramatically on its hind legs. Instead of a cowboy hat, the Son of God wore a halo.

“The Lord was surely with us at Pickin’ and Grinnin’, or we’d all be dead now. We can’t claim it was our shooting skills alone that saved us.”

“But God helps those who help themselves,” Michael said. “And the right gun can provide a lot of self-help.”

Carson noticed with some relief that in the painting Jesus wasn’t packing a pistol.

Dolly said, “The second kind of monster looks like people, too, but not ordinary people. They’re as beautiful as angels. They look as good as Donny and Marie Osmond back when they were young and you just couldn’t take your eyes off them.”

Loreen Rudolph, to whom Carson and Michael had been introduced, was making potato salad on the kitchen island. She said, “Not that Donny and Marie have lost their looks.”

Another woman, stirring a pot of boiling pasta on the stove, said, “Even when Marie got fat there for a while, she looked on her worst day five times as good as I look on my best.”

“Cindy Sue, don’t you go putting yourself down,” Loreen said. “There’s a world full of women who would give up all their teeth to look as good as you.”

“All their teeth and a leg,” Dolly agreed.

Michael said, “All their teeth, a leg, and an ear.”

Cindy Sue blushed and said, “Oh, Mr. Maddison, you’re just a terrible flattermouth.”

Frowning at Michael, Dolly said, “I hope it was flattermouth and not mockery.”

“It was kind of mockery,” Carson said. “But that’s how Michael lets people know he likes them.”

“Even you, dear?”

“Especially me.”

“You must love him very much, although I’d think it’s still a burden.”

“He’s my cross to bear,” Carson said.

“I’ve got my cross, too,” Michael said.

“Sweetheart,” Carson said, “your cross is you.”

“Zinger!” said Loreen, and the churchwomen all laughed.

“Anyway,” Dolly said, “Marie Osmond was more plump than fat, and now she’s thin again and gorgeous. So these three angels come on the stage at the roadhouse, and we expect they’re a music act, but then they change shape, and these silvery swarms come out of them and eat people.”

Dolly’s description didn’t help Carson visualize the enemy.

Seeing her confusion, Farley Samples, one of Dolly’s teenage sons who had been listening while he peeled carrots, stepped forward and said, “What it was — these aliens have advanced nanotechnology. The three that looked like angels, they might have been machines but they just as easy could have been animals. Say they’re animals that were engineered to kill, okay? Then what they probably are … see, they’re each like a colony of billions of tiny nanoanimals no bigger than viruses, programmed to do different tasks. You follow? So they can come together and operate as one creature, each doing its own part, but they can also become a swarm of individuals. Each tiny nanoanimal has rudimentary intelligence, a little bit of memory. But when they all come together, they pool their intelligence, and so when they’re united, they’re smarter than even a smart human being.”

Beaming at Farley, his mother said, “He’s always done well in science. I expect he’ll be the next Bill Gates.”

“Bill Gates isn’t a scientist, Mom.”

“Well, he’s a billionaire, which is just as good.”

“He didn’t even graduate from college,” Farley said.

“When would he have had the time?”

“Who I want to be,” Farley said, “is the next Robert Heinlein. He wrote the best science fiction ever.”

Recognizing Farley Samples as the instrument by which she might convince these people that the threat wasn’t extraterrestrial, Carson said, “Son, nanotechnology isn’t just science fiction, is it?”

“No, ma’am. It’s going to be the next big thing. They’re making advances every day. But our nanotechnology isn’t so far along as what these ETs can do.”

“Maybe it is,” Carson said. “Maybe there’s a secret underground lab out there somewhere along what you folks around here call the End Times Highway. Maybe I know who runs the place, and maybe Michael and I are part of a team trying to shut it down. What would you say about that?”

Farley said, “Holy—”

“Bite your tongue, boy,” his mother warned.

“—macaroni,” Farley finished.

Calling to a couple of the women at work in the adjacent dining room, Dolly said, “Shanona, Vera — the best way for Carson and Michael to understand what we’re up against is to show them your video.”

Shanona Fallon and Vera Gibson came into the kitchen with their cell phones, with which they had been taking video of the stunningly beautiful young woman at Pickin’ and Grinnin’ when suddenly she had turned into a death machine that bored through Johnny Tankredo’s face and then seemed to dissolve and absorb him entirely.

Michael, being Michael, said, “Holy macaroni.”

Carson said nothing, because if she had put her thoughts into words, she could only have said, We’re dead.