The Beasts loped back to the timber, hoping the others had left them some meat. They had not been awake long, only a few weeks, and they had been asleep for a long, long time. Years. He had awakened them, and the Beasts were tired of eating fish and berries. They wanted raw meat, and the sweet, hot, salty taste of blood.
In the timber, they found only scraps of meat, and they were angry. The pair snarled over the scraps and bones, fighting for a moment before realizing the Master would not like them to quarrel. They quieted, then shared what was left, snapping the bones, sucking the marrow.
When they had finished, they dragged the bloody clothing of the boy and the girl to a hole in the ground, deep in the timber. The Beasts slipped into the opening of the deep cave, traveling far into the earth. They did not fear the darkness—they knew it well. They had lived here for a long time. Thousands of years. They had walked this earth long before what is now called man came to this place. But when man came, both before and after the flood, he had hunted them. The Beasts had been hunted with everything from stone axes to guns. But they had—thousands of years before—joined forces with the Master, and He protected them, awakening them from time to time. Now, He had awakened them again.
The Beasts passed one of the ever-awake sentries, growling a greeting, then slipped deeper into the bowels of the earth.
Joan managed to start the truck, killing the engine several times in her hysteria. She was cold, and there was not even a jacket in the truck to cover her nakedness. Her hysteria moved into shock as she bounced down the rough dirt road, driving too fast. She cried with relief when she spotted the sheriff's patrol.
The deputy licked his lips as his eyes traveled over her naked body. He patted her on the shoulder, covered her trembling body with his jacket, and led her to his car. She slid in next to his partner, very conscious of the short jacket and her body. The seat was cold on her bare rump.
"I'll drive the truck," his partner said. "Follow you."
A mile down the road, the deputy turned to the right.
"Aren't we going the wrong way?" Joan asked.
"Short cut," the deputy said.
He drove to an old fishing camp in the back country, near a lake in the Bad Lands. There, ignoring her screaming, the men took turns raping her.
Just before dawn, while Joan lay sobbing on the dirty floor, a car pulled up outside the shack. "Walter," a deputy said, looking out the boarded-up window.
"Sink the truck in the lake," the acting-sheriff told them, his eyes taking in the lushness of the teenager's body. He knelt down and squeezed a soft breast.
"No!" Joan screamed. "Please help me!"
Walter beat her into submission, then raped her. When he had finished, he tied her securely, put her in the back seat of his car, and drove to Tyson's Lake, dumping her over the fence. He backed off, up the hill, watching the Beasts lope toward the girl. They dragged her into the timber. Her screaming lasted a long time as the Beasts took turns mounting her.
Then the timber was silent.
Walter knew the girl had become one of Them, a rapid metamorphosis taking place after she had been bitten on the neck, the infection spreading through her. Walter knew this because the Master's agent had told him how it was done. Then he had taken the acting-sheriff to meet the Beasts.
That encounter had been one of the less pleasant experiences of Walter Addison's life.
Addison drove back to Whitfield, to his apartment. He showered, shaved, put on a clean uniform, and went to his office, waiting for the call from anxious parents. He was very solicitous as he talked with the parents of Joan and Larry, promising them he would do everything he could to find the missing kids.
After hanging up the phone, he looked at a couple of his deputies. They all wore medallions under their uniform shirts. "Some kids disappeared last night," he said. "Parents are all worked up about it."
And they all laughed.
Two
The corruption that almost completely destroyed the town of Whitfield did not occur swiftly. Rather, like a slow-moving cancer, it worked with stealth, insidiously spreading, until the knife could but momentarily halt the propagation, not cure it. Only death would check the dispersion of evil.
The purulence-filled cavity of disgust leaked over into the light one day, dribbling just enough filth to alarm one man and one young woman who loved that man. To jog their sense of outrage. To move them into action.
The minister, Sam Balon, and the woman, Jane Ann Burke.
The forces of evil must have screamed their hatred when Sam began to gather facts, spreading them out in his mind, sorting them into neat little piles of truth.
Most men do not know their limits, their capabilities, their own minds. Sam Balon did. The devil despises the Sam Balon's of the world, and would prefer to stay away from them.
Sam was no lace-pants preacher. He'd been tested many times, and was as tough as wang-leather, understanding the temptations of this world. He had tasted the bittersweetness of evil, and knew that all humankind was susceptible to enticement.
The devil is wary of these kinds of ministers. For these types of men are tough. The Sam Balon types, upon seeing that prayer will not work, will ball their fists and come in swinging. This type of minister does not set himself up as a paragon of virtue, for all to follow their example. They know they are human.
The Sam Balon's of Christian ministry are rare breeds. They enjoy a cold beer after mowing the lawn. They might smoke a pipe or a few cigarettes a day. They enjoy wine with the evening meal. They understand changing times, moving with the flow, not against it. They are not pulpit-pounders or screamers. The young people usually like them.
The devil hates them. For as attractive as Satan makes sin, the Sam Balon's are almost always impervious to it. They cannot be possessed, so they must be destroyed. And the devil sits and scratches his head, wondering—How?
Satan cannot destroy the Sam Balon's at the outset: that would anger God, and the devil knows onlv too well the wrath of God. Satan has felt God's boot on his butt too many times, and that has made him wary. So the devil must work quietly; he must work around the Sam Balon's, hoping the man will not discover the evil until it is too late—until the man is alone, almost defenseless.
In Whitfield, the devil almost succeeded.
"I guess the kids just took off," Walter Addison told the mothers of the missing teenagers. "They will do that, you know. We've had an APB—that's an All Points Bulletin—out for more than a month."
"I know you're doing all you can, Walter," the mother of the missing girl said.
"Well," the sheriff said, standing with his cowboy hat in his hand, "I hate to say this, but kids do funny things nowadays. I personally think it's all that rock and roll music they've taken to listening to. It's got something to do with it. I just don't know, ladies. There is gettin' to be so much sex in the songs and in the movies. No tellin' what it'll be like twenty years from now." He shook his head, a humble man, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. "We'll keep trying, ladies, I can promise you that."
Sam had stood listening. Walter had ignored him, refusing to speak to him.
Crap! the minister thought, watching the sheriff walk away. Pure undiluted cow chips.
5am said goodbye to the ladies and then stood for a moment on the corner of the street.
You're a liar, sheriff! Sam mused. You said you called the FBI, and the FBI came in and looked around, investigating a possible kidnapping. But the FBI never came in here, never questioned anyone, because you never called them. And I'd like to know why.