“God forgive me,” he said and sank to his knees. The sword fell, and his heart fell with it. He could hear it fall, feel it drop from the anchors in his chest. It toppled down into a lower, darker place, and there it would remain.
Crow heard LaMastra moan and he turned away to see that the detective had managed to get into a sitting position. He was covered in blood and breathing heavily. LaMastra looked around the cellar…at the bodies, adult and children, littered like trash. The violence that had been forced out of both men was humiliating and dehumanizing. LaMastra put his head in his palms and began to cry.
Crow stood in the center of the cellar, feeling the grief twist in him, but they were still trapped in the land of the dead, and neither of them knew what other dreadful things they would have to do in order to escape.
(4)
A moment later the cellar was rocked by a BOOM! as something outside exploded.
It jolted them both back into the moment, and Crow grabbed LaMastra and hauled him to his feet.
“What the hell was that?” LaMastra demanded.
Their eyes met.
“Frank!” LaMastra said, a smile leaping onto his face. “He’s still alive and he’s trying to get us out of here.”
“Goddamn!” Crow said. “But let’s not sit here and wait. There has to be a way out of here.”
Shaky and sick to their stomachs, they nonetheless picked up their guns—careful not to look too closely at the bodies—and reloaded. They went over to the fourth door, braced it, opened it…and saw the short flight of stone steps leading up to the yard. Crow used his flash to find the lock and LaMastra blasted it apart. The cellar doors flew open and a waft of fresh air buffeted them.
They stumbled up out of the darkness and collapsed with weary gratitude on the withered brown grass behind the house. The wind was cool and damp and the stormy clouds above looked ready to open. They heard a sound and looked up to see hands of flame reach up from the roof of the house, and a great column of smoke twisted its way into the sky.
“Jesus Christ!” LaMastra yelled. “Frank’s torched the place. Is he out of his mind?”
Crow scrambled to his feet, pulling LaMastra, and together they raced along the side of the burning house and then slid to a halt a dozen feet from the porch, stopped by a wall of intense heat. The entire front of the house was ablaze; sheets of flame raced up the wooden columns, eating the timbers and blackening the bricks. The big pile of rubble that had been the porch roof was a bonfire, and lying next to that mass was a single blackened form, wrapped in a cocoon of orange flame.
They stared in horror. The figure was completely burned, the skin charred to a withered skeleton. On its back was the ruptured and melted remains of a garden tank sprayer.
“Oh, no,” said Crow. “No…please no…don’t do this….”
“FRANK!” Vince LaMastra screamed. “Frank….” He sank slowly down to his knees and beat his big fists on the hard earth, calling his friend’s name over and over again.
Crow stood by helpless and appalled.
There was a roar of a truck engine and Crow spun around to see a battered Ford pickup racing away from the burning house. Crow bolted and ran, cutting across the field in a direct line toward the small gap in the trees toward which the truck was heading. If he had had another three or four seconds he might have made it in time, but the pickup was gathering speed as the driver pushed it beyond all sense, driving with reckless abandon over the lumpy earth. Crow screamed at the driver to stop, but the truck rolled on, gaining the entrance to a road Crow had never known existed. The truck spun and jolted onto the road and in seconds it was gone, lost in a cloud of dust.
Crow fired three shots after the truck, hitting it once and obliterating the left taillight, but then the truck was out of range behind trees. LaMastra came pounding up behind him, shotgun at port arms, eyes fierce with the need to kill, to avenge his friend, but Crow shook his head.
“He’s gone.”
“Shit! Who was it?”
Crow had only gotten one good look at the driver’s face, but it was taking him a few seconds to work out who it was. The man had been horribly burned and covered in soot, most of his head hair was gone, melted by the heat of the fire, and one eye was nearly closed, but Crow was almost positive that he knew the man.
“That was Vic Wingate,” he said.
LaMastra ground his teeth. “He killed Frank!”
“I think so…and I’ll bet he’s the one who rigged the house, too. I think we know who Griswold’s human helper is. Goddamn it. I should have seen this.”
LaMastra wheeled on Crow, chest heaving as if he’d just run a mile. “We have to find him. We have to find him and then I want him. For what he did to Frank, for what he put us through in there…I want him. I want to find that bastard and cut his heart out.”
“I’ll hold him down for you.”
They turned and sprinted back to the ATVs.
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.