It could have crushed them more easily and thoroughly than Samson had smashed Deray’s prisoners. It could have wiped them off the face of the world and never felt their deaths. They were fleas, it was a giant.
And yet it still did not fall.
“What is this?” demanded Grey. “Is this another of your prehistoric animals?”
The Sioux shook his head. “I… don’t know what this is. I’ve never even heard of a monster like this. Maybe it’s something Deray conjured with his black magic.”
“I don’t see a ghost rock implant…”
“No. Perhaps he controls it through sorcery. This is beyond me, Grey.”
“The rifle,” hissed Grey, whispering as if the thing could hear and understand. “The Kingdom rifle!..”
The Sioux nodded numbly and brought the weapon up. They had one round left, but he hesitated, apparently mesmerized by the brute. Or, worried Grey, simply overwhelmed by it. They had seen so much today. Perhaps for Looks Away it was too much.
“It’s too…,” murmured Looks Away, “… it’s too… too…”
Despite the clear hopelessness on his face, Looks Away raised the rifle. There was no clear target. No chest in which a heart might beat. No torso where lungs or liver might fall to a blast from the Kingdom rifle. There was only flesh. Acres of it, it seemed.
“Shoot and then we’ll run,” murmured Grey, beginning to edge backward. Sweat ran down his face and gathered inside his clothes. “Shoot and…”
“And nothing, son,” said a voice.
Both men whirled to see a figure standing on the crest of the ridge. He was tall, with narrow hips and broad shoulders, and he held a Sharps .50 in his pale hands, the barrel pointed at Grey’s chest. He smiled at them, and though the morning light twinkled in his eyes, there was nothing at all comforting in that grin.
“You boys are going to drop the hardware,” he said. “Nice and slow. And then we’re all going to go back downstairs to have ourselves a nice chat with my master, Lord Deray.”
Looks Away licked his lips. “You don’t have to do this…”
The morning light sparkled on the ghost rock embedded in the man’s sternum.
“Yeah,” said Lucky Bob Pearl as he shifted the rifle to point at the Sioux’s face, “I kind of think I do.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Lucky Bob’s smile was as false as an alligator’s, and there was the Devil himself laughing in his eyes. Grey wondered how that worked. If Jenny’s dad was the kind of man everyone said he was, then did this mean that the manitou inside of him had complete control? That seemed at odds with the facts, because Lucky Bob clearly knew Looks Away, just as he had known his daughter even though he’d tried to kill her. How could the demon speak and even to a degree act like the man who had once owned that flesh, and still be able to perpetrate such evil?
“Listen to me, Bob,” said Looks Away desperately, “you don’t have to do anything.”
“I always figured you for a smart fellow, Looksie,” said Lucky Bob. “But I reckon you plum don’t understand the way the world works.”
“I know more than you think.”
“Why? ‘Cause you were down in the dark and you think you saw something?”
“For a start, yes,” said Looks Away. “You’re working with Deray and—.”
“Hey now, you’ll show some respect or I’ll blow a hole in you big enough to stand in. It’s Lord Deray, you red heathen bastard.”
“A racial invective? From you?” Looks Away seemed almost amused. “My, you have changed.”
“More than you can understand.”
“Oh? You think I don’t know what you are? Or what’s inside of you? Or has the manitou made you stupid?”
The smile on Lucky Bob’s face flickered. Clearly he did not expect that kind of response. He adjusted his hands on his rifle and there was a nervous flush on his pale face.
Interesting, thought Grey. If Lucky Bob could blush then he still had blood in his veins. That squared with what Brother Joe had told them. He wasn’t just a walking corpse after all. An idea, perhaps the seed of a plan, began to take root in his mind.
Grey still had his Winchester in his hand and he knew he was a good shot. He was more than half sure he could dodge left and fire from the hip with a reasonable chance of killing this monster with a head shot. And if all he did was wound him with a body shot, the skill Grey had learned on a dozen battlefields insured that he could work the lever and put a second round through the Harrowed’s dead face.
Could he do it, though, without getting Looks Away shot?
Maybe.
Could he do it, knowing that it would break Jenny’s heart?
Not a chance in hell.
Behind him globs of slime dropped from the giant worm and splashed heavily onto the torn desert floor.
“Enough jibber-jabber,” said Lucky Bob. “You boys drop your guns and then we’ll all go down to the Lord of the Dark.”
“Whoa,” said Looks Away, raising one hand, palm outward, “let’s pause on that for a moment. ‘Lord of the Dark’? Seriously? We’re going to call your master the Lord of the effing Dark? Isn’t that a bit, oh I don’t know…”
“Theatrical?” supplied Grey.
“Silly,” decided Looks Away. “I mean… come on, Bob. I worked in the shallowest possible end of the theater when I was with the Wild West Show, and even we couldn’t have come up with something as downright absurd as—.”
Lucky Bob fired a shot and put a bullet into the dirt exactly between Looks Away’s feet. The Sioux jumped a foot in the air and nearly dropped the Kingdom rifle.
And that’s when Grey made his move. He dropped into a low squat, pivoted, buried the stock against his hip, and fired. He aimed with all of his skill and he aimed with his heart. The bullet took Lucky Bob in the stomach. Not the head. From that distance the shot was like getting hit by a mule. The Harrowed staggered backward, and he reflexively threw up his hands. The Sharps spun upward, pinwheeled, and then struck the ground barrel-first, burying itself six inches into the torn sand. Lucky Bob tried to stagger sideways to catch his balance, but instead he collapsed backward.
Above them, the worm roared.
Roared.
Grey had not seen a mouth on it. He had never imagined that a worm had the capacity for sound. But this was a monster from somewhere deep in the earth where nothing natural lives. It had a mouth high, high up on its head, and as the Harrowed fell it let loose with a howl so loud that blood burst from Grey’s ears and nose. Lightning crackled along its trembling length. The whole landscape shuddered.
Grey was already running.
Running.
Looks Away was already outpacing him, and they were both chasing their panic-stricken horses.
Great fissures split on the desert floor as more and more of the monstrous worm smashed upward from below. The echo of that terrible scream seemed to chase them like a storm wind. They ran beyond the confines of its shadow, but immediately the shadows seemed to flow after them. Grey knew that the thing was coming.
“Picky — goddamn it wait!” he bellowed. If he could get onto the damn horse then maybe he could outrun the creature.
Ripples of force whipped along beneath the ground, lifting both men, throwing them like unimportant debris. They landed hard. Grey’s rifle was jerked from his hands on impact, but Looks Away somehow kept hold of the Kingdom rifle.
“Shoot the fucking thing!” bellowed Grey, and the Sioux glanced down at the weapon he carried as though he was surprised to see it. He scrambled to his feet, turned, raised the rifle, and fired.
There was no need to aim. The worm was everywhere. It was so vast that it seemed to blot out the rising sun. The gun bucked in Looks Away’s hand as the compressed gas fired the deadly round. Their last round.