The Earth Mouth rumbled as if in agreement.
"Ginger? Honey? What did you-" Robert stopped. Then he tried an experiment.
"No, Daddy, I don't want any chocolate milk. That's only for nice times, not now," Ginger said.
"Can you-?"
"Hear Mommy? Sometimes her words just come in my head. She thinks it’s sort of silly. But she's scared, too."
Anxiety ground Robert's guts between its molars. "Can you take me to Mommy?"
"No, she doesn't want me to. She wants us to stay here. Until they blow up the monster…"
" They? "
"Emerland and Chester and Herbert DeWalt. That's funny, DeWalt has a bleeding heart."
"Tell me about them."
She did.
Bill felt empty, aching from loneliness, as if his heart had been ripped out and replaced with straw. Yet he also burned with rage at the things that had killed Nettie. He turned away from the graveyard and looked at the patrolman.
Arnie swung his two-handed grip on the gun from side to side, tracking the slow, swarming movements among the trees and monuments. His eyes were wide with fear and shock. "Do I shoot them, or what? Where the hell is the chief when a body needs him?"
Bill figured they didn't teach this situation at the police academy. "It's no sin to kill what’s already dead," Bill said. “Or at least ought to be.”
"Are you drunk or something?"
"No. Was blind but now I see.”
Sandy Henning fell through the hedge ten feet away from them and looked up with her deep alien eyes. She ran the broadleaf of her tongue over her swollen lips. She sprayed something toward the sky, her sagging face quivering. Arnie pulled the trigger twice, and the thing that had been Sandy Henning exploded into a slick pool of miasma.
"They're juicy," Bill said. "Miracles never stop ceasing. Behold. He turns the water into wine."
"Bill?"
Bill looked at the stars and the fading moon, trying to see the face of his cruel God.
"Bill?" Arnie asked again, and Bill could actually hear the patrolman gulp.
"Yes, Arnie?" Bill smiled. His smile scared himself almost as much as it did Arnie.
"Got a shotgun in the car, if you're up to helping."
Bill followed Arnie to the cruiser, its lights oscillating against his face in a steady panic. Arnie tossed Bill the shotgun, a short-barrel pump-action. Then he reached under the dash and pulled out his radio mic. "Unit Six here, you copy, Base?"
Static squawked into the air. The hedges were coming to life, teeming with the creatures who had turned their affections toward Bill and Arnie. Bill pumped the shotgun and the clack was pure metal authority.
"10-4, Unit Six, I copy,” the radio sputtered. “What's your 10–20?"
"Responding to that 10–36 at Windshake Baptist. I've got a 10–44, or, uh, a 10-hell, I don't know if this situation's even got a damned number."
"Come again?"
"10–33. Send backup. On the double. Got some creepers here."
"10-9, Unit Six?"
"Screw it.” Arnie tossed the mic onto the seat. He turned and fired his revolver at the nearest moist hunk of plantmeat. Bill raised the shotgun and pressed the butt against his shoulder.
"We will come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves," Bill sang in a barely recognizable melody, before sending a handful of pellets screaming into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
James looked hopefully out the window as the heavy moon sagged over the horizon, its gravity towing the night along with it. The orange and red flames of dawn licked at the retreating darkness.
Maybe now he would be safe. Now he could warn people, in the daring daylight when sanity wasn't as suspect. He hadn't seen any more of them in the last couple of hours, and the hand had dissolved to a spoonful of flakes.
He'd heard no slogging or snapping, only the drumming of his beaten heart and the occasional wail of sirens. He went to check on Aunt Mayzie. He knocked on her door, softly at first. No answer.
He opened the door a crack, peered in, and saw her still form on the bed. She would be safer there than coming with him. He let her sleep.
James went outside, smelling the air with its fragrant blossoms and lawn grass and faint trace of decomposition. It was an air he was almost afraid to breathe, a spring freshness that he'd never again be able to trust. He looked around, at the shadows of the trees and shrubs, at the fence covered with honeysuckle vines. Nothing moved along the street, as if even the wind was still in bed. He jogged toward town, his head up.
The first of the vendors were out uncovering their display tables and draping their banners. They worked like automatons, Styrofoam coffee cups steaming at their elbows as they arranged their wooden ducks and woven baskets and birdhouses and handmade quilts. Most of them were craft gypsies, in town for a fast buck and a ticket to the next one. The woman at the Petal Pushers’s booth barely gave him a glance as he passed her.
A couple of long-haired men in shorts, tank tops, and big boots were running wires to the performers’ stage, troubleshooting the sound system. A blonde-haired woman sat behind the mixing board, arching her back as she swept her hair behind her. One of the sound men walked over to her and planted a greasy kiss on her lips. The other roadie climbed onto the stage and started speaking into a microphone.
"Testing, testing, one-two-three," his voice boomed out of the speaker stacks. A few heads turned from the booths.
James kept moving toward the stage, the dew thick under his Nikes. If he could get to the microphone, maybe he could warn them.
"Testing, testing… this is only a test," the roadie said.
Something stumbled from the shrubs at the edge of the Haynes House and reached for the source of the noise. James saw its dripping jaws and the unmistakable hunger in its eyes. Its green eyes.
The roadie at the microphone didn't notice that the band had attracted a new groupie. He kept on with his sound check, trying to draw the attention of the snuggling couple behind the mixing board. "Had this been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed.. "
James shouted at the roadie, but the man couldn't hear over his own amplified voice. The watery monster fell onto the stage and slid on its belly like a mutated and overgrown infant.
"… uh, where to tune… blah, blah, blah. Hey, Mick, is that all right, man?"
But Mick was too busy with the tongue of the blonde to respond.
James waved his arms at the roadie and pointed to the creature.
The roadie ignored James, experienced in dealing with crazed fans and overdose cases. "Yo, Mick? That loud enough?"
The marsh-creature fell against the drum kit, knocking over a cymbal stand. Its pale skin glistened under the early sun. The roadie turned and saw the horror that was only a few feet from his ankles. A scream pealed from somewhere down the block and a table full of handmade pottery clattered onto the street.
Somebody ran behind the stage, too fast to be one of the creatures, and James heard another scream. He wouldn't have to warn them after all. Seeing was believing. Even if you weren't sure what you were looking at.
The roadie kicked at the marsh-creature and his boot stuck in the jelly of its neck. The creature reached with thorny hands and clamped onto the man's shin. His scream ripped through the microphone and across the upset morning.
"Help me, Mick-iiiiieeeee." The roadie whimpered from fear as he fell. Mick started around the mixing board, but then got a better look at the thing that was attached to his buddy. He slowly backed away, his eyes like cameras taking horror stills.
The blonde screamed and ran toward the Haynes House. She was up the steps and headed for the door when the nearby haystack erupted. One of the creatures fell onto her, chaff clinging to its wet skin as it hugged. It pulled her into the hay and gurgled contentedly as it sucked her face.