if.
If they ever made it through this part of the woods and onto a stretch of open ground.
If they weren't brought down by Spivey's hounds in the next half hour or forty-five minutes.
if.
The woods were shadowy, and they soon found that the narrow eye holes of the ski masks limited their vision even further.
They tripped and stumbled because they didn't see everything in their path, and at last they had to take the masks off. The subzero air nipped at them, but they would just have to endure it.
Charlie became acutely aware that their lead on Spivey's people was dwindling. They had been at the cabin almost five minutes. So they were now just fifteen minutes ahead of the pack, maybe even less. And because he couldn't move as fast as he wanted while carrying Joey, Charlie had little doubt that their lead was narrowing dangerously, minute by minute.
The land rose more steeply; he began to breathe harder, and he beard Christine panting behind him. His calves and thighs were knotted, beginning to ache already, and his arms were weary with the burden of the boy. The convenient channel began to curve eastward, which wasn't the way they needed to go. It was still heading more north than east, so they could continue to follow it for a short while, but soon he would have to put the boy down in order to make his way overconsiderably less hospitable terrain. If they were going to escape, Joey would have to walk on his own.
But what if he wouldn't walk? What if he just stood there, staring, empty-eyed?
Grace crouched within the snowmobile, staying down out of the line of fire, though her old bones protested against her cramped position.
It was a black day in the spirit world. This morning, discovering this disturbing development, she thought she would not be able to dress in harmony with the spectral energies. She had no black clothes. There had never been a black day prior to this.
Never. Fortunately, Laura Panken, one of her disciples, had a black ski suit, and they were nearly the same size, so Grace swapped her gray suit for Laura's black outfit.
But now she almost wished she weren't in contact with the saints and with the souls of the dead. The spectral energies radiating from them were uniformly unsettling, tinged with fear.
Grace was also assaulted with clairvoyant images of death and damnation, but these didn't come from God; they had another source, a taint of brimstone. With emotionally unsettling visions, Satan was trying to destroy her faith, to terrorize her. He wanted her to turn, run, abandon the mission. She knew what the Father of Lies was up to. She knew. Sometimes, when she looked at the faces of those around her, she didn't see their real countenances but, instead, rotting tissue and maggot-ridden flesh, and she was shaken by these visions of mortality.
The devil, as wise as he was evil, knew she would never give in to temptation, so he was trying to shatter her faith with a hammer of fear.
It wouldn't work. Never. She was strong.
But Satan kept trying. Sometimes, when she looked at the stormy sky, she saw things in the clouds: grinning goat heads, monstrous pig faces with protruding fangs. There were voices in the wind, too. hissing, sinister voices made false promises, told lies, spoke of perverse pleasures, and their hypnotic descriptions of these unspeakable acts were rich in images of the mutant beauty of wickedness.
While she was crouched in the snowmobile, hiding from the rifleman at the top of the meadow, Grace suddenly saw a dozen huge cockroaches, each as large as her hand, crawling over the floor of the machine, over her boots, inches from her face. She almost leapt up in revulsion. That was what the devil wanted; he hoped she would present a better target and make an easy job of it for Charlie Harrison. She swallowed hard, choked on her revulsion, and remained pressed down in the small space.
She saw that each cockroach had a human head instead of the head of an insect. Their tiny faces, filled with pain and selfdisgust and terror, looked up at her, and she knew these were damned souls who had been crawling through Hell until, moments ago, Satan had transported them here, to show her how he tortured his subjects, to prove his cruelty had no limits. She was so afraid that she almost lost control of her bladder. Staring at the beetles with human faces, she was supposed to wonder how God could permit the existence of Hell. That's what the devil meant for her to do. Yes. She was supposed to wonder if, by permitting Satan's cruelty, God was indeed cruel Himself.
She was supposed to doubt the virtue of her Maker. This vision was intended to bring despair and fear deep into her heart.
Then she saw that one beetle had the face of her dead husband, Albert.
No. Albert was a good man. Albert had not gone to Hell. It was a lie.
The tiny face peered up, screaming yet making no sound. No. Albert was a sweet man, sinless, a saint. Albert in Hell? Albert damned for eternity? God wouldn't do such a thing. She was looking forward to being with Albert again, in Heaven, but if Albert had gone the other way.
She felt herself teetering on the edge of madness.
No. No, no, no. Satan was lying. Trying to drive her crazy.
He'd like that. Oh, yes. If she was insane, she wouldn't be able to serve her God. If she even questioned her sanity, she would also be questioning her mission, her Gift, and her relationship with God. She must not doubt herself. She was sane, and Albert was in Heaven, and she had to repress all doubts, give herself completely to blind faith.
She closed her eyes and would not look at the things crawling on her boots. She could feel them, even through the heavy leather, but she gritted her teeth and listened to the rifle fire and prayed, and when eventually she opened her eyes, the cockroaches were gone.
She was safe for a while. She had pushed the devil away.
The rifle fire had stopped, too. Now, Pierce Morgan and Denny Rogers, the two men who had been sent into the woods to circle around behind Charlie Harrison, called from the upper end of the meadow. The way was clear. Harrison was gone.
Grace climbed out of the snowmobile and saw Morgan and Rogers at the top of the meadow, waving their arms. She turned to the body of Carl Rainey, the first man shot. He was dead, a big hole in his chest. The wind was drifting snow over his outflung arms. She knelt beside him.
Kyle eventually came to her." O'Conner is dead, too. And George Westvec." His voice quaked with anger and grief.
She said, "We knew some of us would be sacrificed. Their deaths were not in vain."
The others gathered around: Laura Panken, Edna Vanoff, Burt Tully. They looked as angry and determined as they did frightened. They would not turn and run. They believed.
Grace said, "Carl Rainey. is in Heaven now, in the arms of God.
So are. " She had trouble remembering first nanies for O'Conner and Westvec, hesitated, once again wishing that the Gift did not drive so much else out of her mind." So are. George Westvec and.
Ken. Ken. uh. Kevin
Kevin O'Conner. all in Heaven."
Gradually the snow knitted a shroud over Rainey's corpse.
"Will we bury them here?" Laura Panken-asked.
"Ground's frozen," Kyle said.
"Leave them. No time for burials," Grace said." The Antichrist is within our reach, but his power grows by the hour. We can't delay."
Two of the Skidoos were out of commission. Grace, Edna, Laura, and Burt Tully rode in the remaining two, while Kyle followed them on foot to the top of the meadow where Morgan and Rogers were waiting.
A sadness throbbed through Grace. Three men dead.
They moved forward, proceeding in fits and starts, only when the way ahead had been scouted, wary of running into another ambush.
The wind had picked up. The snow flurries grew thicker. The sky was all the shades of death.