Sheriff Hoyt took a step off the curb and saw that some idiot was driving a goddamn combine corn harvester up the middle of the street, scattering panicked Boy Scouts before the giant tractor like it was a sleepy dog that had wandered into a rabbit warren. The driver must have been drunk, because the massive combine was drifting across both lanes, scraping the shit out of the parked cars on either side of the street.
He started toward it. Somebody had to stop the dumb son of a bitch. In nearly thirty years of law enforcement, Sheriff Hoyt had never seen anything quite like this. He’d arrested drunks driving nearly every make and model of vehicle on the highway, hauled in punks drinking on those troublesome ATVs, even had to put the cuffs on a wasted cowboy on a horse. The only thing that even came close to this mess was when he caught a couple of Mexicans drunk on a John Deere, but that was in a field, not even on one of the back-county roads.
This, this took the goddamn cake.
Sheriff Hoyt hit the button on his radio. “Chisel, you sit tight. I’ll deal with you soon enough. We got a situation in town that requires real law enforcement.” He didn’t bother to listen to her response and turned his radio off for the time being. Just until he got this new mess sorted out.
He got close enough to see inside the combine’s cab. It almost looked like that was Bob Morton himself in there. Shit. Well, this situation just got a hell of a lot more complicated. Sheriff Hoyt resnapped his holster. He’d been thinking he might have to make an impression on the driver, but now that he saw it was Bob Morton, well, his job was going to require a bit more finesse than simply sticking a pistol in somebody’s face and telling him to grab the pavement.
He looked up and down the street, but the only law enforcement he could see right away was that pussy town deputy, Hendricks. He raised his arm, got the numbskull’s attention, and pointed at the combine. The dumbshit waved back. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. It was a wonder the man hadn’t shot himself cleaning his own weapon.
At least they didn’t have to jump onto a moving vehicle. Bob took care of that.
The combine veered away from the left side of the street, scaring away a whole flock of parade watchers, and smashed the twelve-row header right into Phil Larkins’s 1957 Chevy pickup. Four of the header’s conical snouts impaled the poor old antique like a pitchfork sinking into a bale of hay. Sheriff Hoyt winced. Larkins’s insurance guys were going to raise holy hell. The trailer couldn’t take the sudden turn and twisted helplessly behind the combine, spilling two acres’ worth of corn into the street.
Bob sat in the cab and it didn’t look like he was moving much.
Deputy Hendricks finally got the hint that he was supposed to help out. He joined Sheriff Hoyt at the foot of the huge, bright green John Deere combine. Damn thing had tank-like treads for the front drivers, instead of regular wheels. A six-foot ladder rose to the cab. Hendricks hung back and made it clear that he didn’t want to be the first one up there.
Neither paid much attention to the gray cloud that swirled from the spilled corn and rolled out across Main Street.
Sheriff Hoyt started up the steep stairs. He got up to the catwalk and was surprised to find the windows of the cab fogging up or something. It was hard to see inside and he could just make out Bob’s shape, sitting in the bucket seat. He gave it a minute, giving the man a chance to collect himself before he came out and embarrassed himself in front of the whole damn town.
When Bob didn’t move, Sheriff Hoyt knocked on the glass, still polite. He gave it a few moments, but his patience was running out. He knocked again. “Mr. Morton? Bob, that you? Fun’s over. Time to come out now.”
Sheriff Hoyt looked down the ladder at Hendricks, who shrugged. Sheriff Hoyt shook his head. The deputy was about as useless as tits on a boar. He took hold of the door handle, when some instinct, born out of decades of standing guard at the threshold of law and order, keeping the forces of chaos and wild, merciless rage at bay, whispered quietly in the back of his mind. It was the kind of voice he would listen to very carefully if it spoke to him when approaching a strange vehicle or knocking on a quiet door. A sixth sense that he took seriously, but would never acknowledge out loud.
Only this time it had Sandy’s voice.
So he ignored it and opened the cab door.
It took Sheriff Hoyt a few seconds to recognize Bob Morton. He’d never seen anybody this bloated and gray still sitting upright. If he hadn’t seen the man only the day before, Sheriff Hoyt would have sworn that Bob had been pulled out of the Mississippi River after a week or two of festering on the bottom. His first thought was that this was some kind of sick joke, and somebody had stuffed Bob’s dead body in the combine cab.
But then Bob moved his head, and tried to say something.
Sheriff Hoyt leaned closer to listen.
Unintelligible words came out as a kind of wheezing moan. It didn’t look like Bob could fully retract his tongue, and so it poked out from between black teeth, swollen and discolored. He opened his mouth wider and Sheriff Hoyt could see dozens upon dozens of little gray nubs erupting out of his tongue, his gums, the insides of his cheeks. The smallest were the diameter of a single grain of rice, the largest the rounded end of a Q-tip.
Up close, Sheriff Hoyt could now see more of the tiny buds sticking out of Bob’s nostrils, his ears, even pushing out of his eyelids. Bob couldn’t even blink with all those things in the way. From a distance, it looked like someone in a hurry had applied cheap, clumping eyeliner to the farmer’s eyes.
Bob had never been a fitness model, but he had kept himself relatively trim for a man in his fifties. Now, though, his distended stomach almost reached the steering wheel. His fingers were swollen, like sausages that had been left on the grill too long. He wheezed again, his arm flopping against the control console.
Sheriff Hoyt realized he should remove the keys, just in case Bob hit the wrong button. He didn’t want to get any closer, but reached in and as his fingers brushed against the keys, Bob started to make deep, retching sounds.
And just as Sheriff Hoyt managed to twist the keys and kill the engine, Bob’s head exploded in a dry mist, as if someone violently twisted a desiccated orange, popping it open, spitting dried seeds and dusty pulp into the air.
Bob’s torso was next, splitting open in four or five wrenching cracks, spraying the inside of the cab with a dark, wet cloud. Gray slime slid down the windows and dripped from the ergonomic controls.
Sheriff Hoyt caught the blast full in the face and was dead before his knees collapsed. He pitched off the combine and landed on his head in the middle of Main Street.
Deputy Hendricks leaned over him and asked, “You okay, Sheriff?”
The gentle winds took the gray cloud from the cab and the trailer and pushed it playfully every which way into the crowds, up and down the street. There was a single scream, but the spores were met primarily with stupefied confusion. A few people understood that something bad was blowing through the town and tried to gather their families and run.
By then, it was all too late.
Sandy spun in a circle, taking it in, the hulking barn, the burning house, the smoldering cars, the dead man on the lawn, and surrounding it all, the green, whispering, waiting corn. She’d seen Cochran’s monsters crawling over the man in the basement, and now she had no doubt that the fields were full of them. And maybe even worse things.
She had to get to town to find Kevin. Something in Sheriff Hoyt’s voice, just before he clicked off, had raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She had no doubt that whatever havoc this corn fungus was wreaking out in the fields had spread somehow to the center of Parker’s Mill.