It felt as though his hands and arms were being absorbed by the body.
He pushed as hard as he could without meeting anything solid, anything substantial, but the push must have been enough. The black figure toppled forward into the fire.
"Stand back!" Brother Elias ordered.
The charred blackness melted off the figure, and inside Jim saw something white and shiny and vaguely translucent. The body disappeared in a long, sustained flash of red, and the entire fire suddenly turned the color of blood. A shock wave of foul-smelling heat rolled outward from the blaze.
Fifteen feet away, Brad's struggling body suddenly went limp. Gordon held the pitchfork in place for a moment, but when the figure did not move again he let up. Jim came running over, and both of them picked up the body, carrying it to the fire and throwing it in. There was another flash of light, this one not as long, and the body was gone.
Blood was still streaming down Brother Elias' face from his crushed nose and eye, dripping down onto his suit. The preacher was standing before the blaze, hands outstretched, speaking loudly in his alien tongue. The red flames lent an unearthly tint to his features, highlighting the liquid redness of the blood on his face. The flames flared suddenly then died down to nothing. The fire devolved to its original smoking embers, and the burning ring of blood surrounding it went out completely. A thick wave of oppressive black smoke poured out from the now dormant woodpile.
Gordon looked down at the camera around his neck and saw that it had been broken. The lens was smashed, and light was leaking into the camera through a crack in the body, ruining the film. None of his pictures would come out.
The smoke was spreading upward, carried by an unfelt wind, blocking out the rays of the morning sun, covering the sky. Though the fire had died and there was nothing left to burn, the smoke continued to pour forth in great gusts. Gordon looked up and saw that the tip of the smoke cloud had formed a clawed hand.
Brother Elias picked up the box with the remaining jars of blood.
"There's more to do," he said. "It's not over yet." He carried the box to the car. "Come on. We must go."
"To Milk Ranch Point," the sheriff said.
"To Milk Ranch Point," Brother Elias agreed.
Gordon moved toward them, supporting a weakened Father Andrews on his arm. "One of them jumped up and attacked him," Gordon explained.
Brother Elias grabbed the priest's arm and squeezed it tightly. Father Andrews screamed, but when the preacher removed his hand the bleeding had stopped. "You must be strong," Brother Elias said. "God needs you now,"
The four of them walked back to the trucks.
"We'll all go in the same truck," Jim said. "It'll be a little tight, but we can't afford any accidents."
Brother Elias nodded. As the other three piled into the cab of Gordon's truck, the preacher picked a stray piece of paper off the ground, took out his lighter, and set the paper on fire. He dropped it on the ground. It spread to another piece of paper and then to a dried tree branch. He got into the truck and Jim started the engine.
"Are you just going to let that burn?" Gordon asked.
The preacher nodded. "Rangers will spot the fire when it has done its work. They will put it out."
The fire reached the body of a mindlessly squirming infant and engulfed it.
The truck backed out, tires squishing bodies beneath them, small bones breaking. None of them even winced at the terrible sounds or at the bumpy feel of the truck as it drove over the tiny bodies on the way out of the landfill.
Before they reached the highway, they heard a massive explosion as the flames reached Brad Nicholson's Pepsi truck.
Marina searched frantically through the bathroom, looking for a weapon. She opened the medicine chest and quickly pawed through its contents, throwing the discarded and rejected items onto the floor. She held the can of Right Guard deodorant for a moment. She had seen a character in a movie once use an aerosol spray can as a flame thrower, holding a lighted match in front of the spray. But she had no match, no flame whatsoever. She threw the can onto the floor. A small pair of scissors was lying in the top drawer under the sink, amidst various makeup containers and old curlers. She picked up the scissors, but rejected the idea immediately. Too small.
There was nothing she could do.
She sat down on the toilet once again. She had panicked at first, crying uncontrollably and screaming at whatever was outside the door.
Then she had forced herself to adjust to the situation, forced herself to calm down and think rationally. The creatures outside the door had taunted her. Something large had been thrown against the door. Small rocks had been thrown against the shuttered window from the outside.
Marina stared at her face in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was disheveled; mascara ran down her cheeks in twin rivulets. Her lips were dry and cracked. She buried her face in her hands.
Outside the door, something small chuckled evilly to itself. Other voices joined in.
"Get the hell out of here!" Marina screamed.
The bathroom door rattled as something tried to turn it. Marina held her stomach protectively, acutely aware of the defenseless baby within her. She knew that whatever was out there was only toying with her, playing games with her. They would tire of her soon, and then she would find out what was really in store.
Several small voices, in and around the house, outside, on the roof, babbled crazily in unison, and were suddenly silent. She held her breath.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen.
Marina stood up, pressing her ear to the door, listening.
Nothing.
She moved over to the shuttered window.
Nothing.
Slowly, cautiously, she opened the wooden shutter. Several shards of broken glass fell into the bathroom. She peeked outside, but there was nothing, no one, no sign of life. She walked back across the bathroom and carefully opened the door. The hallway was littered with broken glass and china. Two chairs had been dragged out from the kitchen and were overturned next to the bedroom door. An antique porcelain lamp, given to her by her grandmother, had been smashed against the wall.
But there was no sign of life.
Marina opened the door wider. She saw nothing and moved slowly out into the hall. The china cracked under her feet. She stepped over an overturned chair. She moved toward the kitchen and stepped through the kitchen door.
Something pink, moving at lightning speed, dashed out from under the table and knocked her backward to the floor. Her head hit hard against a smashed plate. Small fingers grabbed her arms and legs and spread them wide.
Marina screamed as the point of an ice pick was driven through her right hand. Her head whipped around and she saw two small malformed infants pressing the pick through her hand into the tile floor. She screamed again as steak knives impaled her other hand and her feet, but though she felt dizzy and weak she did not pass out.
Scores of tiny infants, all hideously deformed, were moving around the floor of the kitchen, cackling to themselves.
She closed her eyes in pain and disbelief. She opened her eyes to see a large evil-looking baby clutching in its hand her good carving knife.
The creature smiled. Morning sunlight glinted off the polished metal of the knife, and Marina realized that the knife was going to be used to cut her open and kill her unborn daughter.
Screaming, she blacked out.
The truck moved slowly up the winding highway that switch backed up the face of the Rim. From this vantage point, they could see the forest below them. Jim saw that the clouds of billowing black smoke were still spreading upward from the landfill, now augmented by the more natural gray smoke of a forest fire. Farther south, the morning sunlight glinted off the buildings of Randall, a small whitish patch in the sea of green trees.