5
There were shapes in the sand, outlines. Small, light figures that cavorted behind a curtain of tan; larger, darker, unrecognizable creatures that slouched through the windblown dirt, barely seen. It was as if the dust-storm was a cover, a cover for… for what?
An army of monsters that was invading McGuane.
Scott turned away from the window. That was the thought that came to him, and while he knew it sounded crazy, he believed it. As he’d told Adam, McGuane was a haunted place, and it seemed to be getting worse by the minute.
His parents were fighting again, screaming at each other in the bedroom. Earlier, he’d taken advantage of the situation and tried to call Adam from the phone in his dad’s den, but the line had been busy. He’d tried again just now, but a recorded voice said that line had been disconnected.
He didn’t like that.
And he liked the shapes in the sandstorm even less.
For some reason they reminded him of the bathhouse, of the pictures he’d taken.
Like most of the people in town, his parents were blaming the Molokans for bringing this curse upon McGuane, and he was glad they hadn’t seen the shapes in the sand. They stupidly thought it was Adam’s influence that had made him throw rocks at cars on the highway and had led to his arrest—that was one of the things he’d wanted to talk to Adam about—and their anger had grown from there. Part of his parents’ current fight had been about his dad going off to “smoke some Russians.” Luckily his mom had refused to let him go, yelling at him, telling him he could pretend all he wanted outside these walls with his friends, but in here, where it counted, in the bedroom, she knew he was not a man.
The argument had branched out from that starting point to cover the usual issues and grievances, and for once he was glad his parents were fighting. It kept them occupied.
Ordinarily, he hit the road when his parents got into it like this, going over to someone else’s house, hanging out at French’s. But tonight he stayed home. Their screaming was the worst he’d ever heard, but he knew it was preferable to what was happening outside, and as he looked through the window at the obscured world out there, he thought that no matter how tense things got in here, right now there was no place else in town he’d rather be.
The cells were full. The sheriff tried once again to radio the Rio Verde sheriff’s station to ask if they had any open cells where prisoners could be transferred, but, as before, he was unable to get through.
He tried Willcox, tried Safford, tried Benson.
No answer.
Roland slammed down the mike on the radio set, frustrated. Tish, holding down the front desk by herself, looked over at him, worried, and he forced himself to smile reassuringly at her.
“Still no answer?”
He shook his head. “I’ll try again in a few minutes.” He started to walk back to his office but noticed something strange when he passed the hallway leading to the holding area.
Silence.
He frowned, listening. The prisoners were awfully quiet all of a sudden, and that didn’t sit well with him. Not with things going the way they were. He made a detour down the hall, knocked on the metal door that led to the holding area. “Tom!” he called.
He expected the door to be opened immediately, but when there was no response, he called his deputy’s name again and quickly pulled out his own keys, a feeling of dread growing within him. “Tom!”
He pulled open the door.
Tom was lying unmoving in the middle of the corridor that ran between the two rows of cells. In the cells themselves, the prisoners were dead. All of them. Pressed against the bars, faces blue-black from lack of oxygen, eyes bulging from their sockets in contrasting white.
A cold fear gripped Roland’s heart and he turned around, wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible, not even bothering to check on Tom’s condition to make sure he was dead.
The metal door slammed shut in his face.
Faron Kent pulled to a stop in front of the temple. He’d been born and raised Mormon, had left the church only when he’d married Claire, but he still considered Mormons his people, and when he saw all of the cars and trucks parked in front of the temple, he knew where he had to go.
He’d just come into town, and he’d almost pulled off to the side of the road to wait out the sandstorm once he’d come through the tunnel and experienced its ferocity. There’d been only a slight wind in the adjoining canyons through which he’d driven, nothing at all on the flat desert plain before. Which mean that this freakishly localized weather could not possibly last the night. It was probably safer to pull onto the shoulder and catch a couple winks than attempt to maneuver these narrow roads with zero visibility.
But…
But he saw shadows in the sandstorm. Figures. Creatures. And he heard things. And he thought it safer to try and navigate the roads than pull off and wait for… what?
As he drove down the sloping highway into town, as the sand and its hidden inhabitants swirled about his car, old buried beliefs from his upbringing suddenly kicked in, and he found himself wondering if this was the end, if these were the last days.
It did not seem that far-fetched, and when he saw all the vehicles parked in front of the dark Mormon temple, he immediately and impulsively pulled in.
Even as he braked, however, the wind was lessening, the sandstorm dying down. There were still no lights on in McGuane, other than what looked like headlights further up the road, but a faint glow of moonlight from above the storm could now be seen filtering onto the scattered buildings.
And the mine.
For that was the only place where he saw movement, the open pit across the highway, and the movement that he saw, that instantly grabbed his attention, scared the living shit out of him.
There were creatures crawling out from the mine, emerging from the pit onto the ground above, creatures of dirt and gravel, monsters made from copper tailings and animated with some hellish spark of life.
The last days.
His first instinct was to run inside the temple for sanctuary, but his experiences during the intervening years proved far stronger than the influence of his upbringing, and he reached for the rack behind him and pulled his shotgun down.
He got out of the pickup, locked and loaded, and strode bravely across the highway. He pointed his shotgun, aimed it at the first sand creature and pulled the trigger.
With a short, high wail, the creature dissolved into dust.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He targeted the next monster pulling itself up, its mineral fingers still clutching the edge of the pit, and when its head exploded in a shower of dirt, it fell back into the mine.
Behind him, a few of the braver men were walking out onto the steps from inside the temple to see what was going on. The wind had died down enough now that the sound of the shotgun blasts had carried.
“Grab some weapons!” he yelled as loud as he could. “I need some help here!”
There was a second’s hesitation, then two men sprinted down the steps and out to their pickups. A moment later, three others ran out of the temple to help.
He smiled, feeling good, feeling strong, and blew the next monster into a cloud of dust that dissipated in the wind.
6
They were starting toward the cars when Agafia saw Gregory staggering up to the church through the blowing sand.
Even with the flashlights pointed at him, he remained only a silhouette, but she would have recognized her son’s shape anywhere, and she drew in her breath sharply. He was lurching to the left, and it was obvious that there was something seriously wrong. Her first instinct was maternal, and she wanted to run to him and hug him and pray over him and make him feel better. But pragmatism took over instantly, and she ordered the others back into the shot-up and now hairless church, warning them to stay down. Julia shoved the kids through the door, and Adam’s little friend went with them. The older Molokans obeyed as well, but some merely doused their flashlights and moved off to the right or to the left, waiting to see what was going to happen. The Indians, following some plan of their own, broke up and began moving into the dust storm, into the night, attempting, she assumed, to sneak up behind Gregory.