“We still have to deal with the people in Jackson,” Gibs had said back in the Bowl when the killing was finally done. “How the hell do you plan to defeat a group that large? We can’t just hide up here, either, they’ll come for payback at some point. What’s the plan? Wipeout however many hundreds are left?”
Jake had looked down on the pile of fresh bodies lined up in the dirt outside the garage; several average-sized corpses offset by one goliath body. Others stood with them—Rebecca had been there along with Fred—while the rest kept their distance for various reasons. After the fighting… after Jake had taken Amanda into the library to retrieve the children, Gibs remembered Amanda disappearing back into her cabin with Elizabeth. He hadn’t seen her since then.
Rebecca and Fred stood close behind Jake as he considered the question, and Gibs could see from the look in their eyes that they were not yet ready for the killing to end. The set of their shoulders disturbed Gibs in ways he couldn’t define, giving him the sense he needed to stay close by.
When Jake finally spoke, Gibs had half-forgotten the question, and it took him a minute to catch up. “It’s a lesson I learned from you, Gibs. We don’t have to kill them. We need only rob them of their will to fight.”
“And how the fuck do we manage that? I imagine they’ll be cranky when they learn what happened here.”
Jake’s eyes hadn’t shifted from the bodies. They didn’t blink, narrow, or widen. All that moved was his chest; that slow, measured breathing. Puffing white air through a slack mouth.
“I’m going to teach them the price of staying. They’ll learn there are monsters living in the mountains.”
Then Jake called for a large game bag, and the bow saw they used to trim the thicker branches from firewood. Fred had nodded and rushed to comply while Rebecca stood next to Jake, arm resting on the receiver of her rifle. She stared along with him at the bodies, never flinching.
“Jake… what the fuck are you planning?” Gibs asked.
“No.”
“No? The hell do you mean ‘no’?”
“I won’t be questioned on this, Gibs. Don’t shake your head; I can hear it in your voice. There will be no more. I will not… lose… another… one.”
Rebecca blew air through the corner of her mouth. Not looking up, she said, “They’re already gone. It’s not like they’ll feel anything.”
“Jesus-fucking-Christ…”
“I wonder if you’d see to the Hummer, Gibs? We’ll need it fueled and loaded, yes?”
He saw Fred coming back with the saw. A large canvas sack that had gone over from white to brown in its long months of use dangled from his shoulder like a chef’s hand towel. Gibs glanced again at Rebecca, who either would not or could not return his gaze.
“Very well.”
Elton stood at the edge of the lot, the greater number of his people fanning out behind him. The fires pushed out a ring of light perhaps only twenty or thirty feet beyond the driveway, and descending overhead from the shadows were the boughs of nearby trees leaning down to scrape the tops of their heads. The Avenue stretched on into darkness; a plain of black under a cloudy, starless night sky. He knew the street was lined on one side by houses but, apart from the first on the corner, he couldn’t see a damned thing. The people kept filtering out from the hotel lobby. Elton was almost positive every damned one of them stood at his back. They were starved for more than just food. The scent of new developments floated on the air.
“Why the hell are we all out here?” he asked.
“It’s too dark to see, now,” Horace said. “Some of the guys noticed a couple of barrels were set up down the way. We asked around, and nobody remembered seeing ’em this morning. None of ours set ’em up.”
Elton looked around at the gathering and sighed. The whole fucking town had lined up behind him, and there were those goddamned torches again. A bunch of starving, jumpy people staring out into the darkness looking for some goddamned barrels.
“Well, has anyone gone out to take a look with some flashlights?” he asked.
“No… we wanted to get you, first. We, uh… we didn’t think we’d end up with the whole neighborhood. Sorry…”
Elton rolled his head through an exaggerated circle—the combination of a shake and a nod—and said, “Yeah, man. Rumors move quick.”
“Now you tell us,” Danielle muttered in frustration. She eyed Horace in rank aggravation, and he shrunk away like plastic under a blowtorch. She felt Cuate’s arms tighten around her thigh and slipped a hand down to rub his back.
“Look!” someone in the gathering shouted.
They all returned their attention to the dark road. Two spots of orange floated next to each other far off in the blackness, flickering like dying stars.
“What the hell…?” Elton began.
“I told you, man, those are those damned barrels! They’ve been lit!”
They watched in silence as the flickering matured to burning. The night’s two-dimensional nature first made them appear as if they were minuscule bulbs a few yards away. As time passed and the flames grew, the surrounding area began to rise from the shadows. Elton thought he saw a street sign close by. If he was correct, he assessed the distance of the fires to be anywhere between eighty and two hundred yards away; it was awful damned hard to tell with no light to aid his judgment.
The size of the fires grew steadily in the wind, lengthening spires waving high in the air, and at their brightest intensity, Elton saw a figure standing at their center. It stood with the fires at its back, a perfect silhouette as flat as the night that enshrouded it.
Elton’s people called out in fear as soon as the form came to view; he heard men and women both calling for rifles and shotguns. He yelled them all down to silence, noting the continuation of shaking whispers when the shouting ceased.
He reached out and found Danielle’s hand, clasped it in his own, and whispered, “Well… what do you think about this?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. He looked at her sharply, saw the expression on her face, and swallowed. She did not look herself.
When Elton looked back at the fires, he saw that the figure was walking toward their gathering. The gait was labored; asymmetrical. After a few moments, somebody asked what the man was dragging, and that was all it took for Elton to see it himself; some misshapen mass obscuring the legs. At his current remove, it appeared the man was wearing a long apron, but then the thing behind him would roll a bit to one side, or the other and Elton could see the light between his legs.
“Rifles!” Horace called.
A few moments ago, Elton would have contradicted that order. Now, though…
A few moments, it seemed, was sufficient to change a man’s entire outlook on life.
He heard a wave of cycled weapon actions and the figure kept coming at his steady pace. Elton wondered if he could see them; if he could see their weapons.
“Hey, out there!” he shouted, straining his throat in the process. “Who the hell is that! You wait right there, goddamn it! We’ll shoot! You hear?”
He didn’t answer. He’d closed half the distance to their group and was still coming. Whoever he was, he’d left the fires far behind, but the straightness of the road kept the light enough to his back that he was still visible. The darkness closed in, though, reducing the sharp lines of his form to faded smoke.
Elton strained to get his rifle sight on the advancing form. He could barely see the damned thing in the shitty light. He drew breath and shouted, “Stop now, god DAMN you!”
The air around them split wide open, and from the rent was birthed a thundering hell the likes of which they’d never experienced. It crashed over the people huddled together in the lot like the end of all existence, throbbing in hideous, ear-shattering gouts of rage. Overhead, the front entrance of the resort was pulverized to dust, showering those below with the fragmentation of wood, glass, masonry, bits of metal, and rock. They collapsed to the pavement as a single body, protecting the heads and necks of loved ones with bare arms and hands; screaming, all of them screaming.