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  The second creature grunted from its strapped-down bed. The lizard ran to its side and tore away the leather straps. The manlike creature stepped out into the hall, spotted the dead nurse, and reached down, tearing off one arm. It walked up the corridor, munching on the arm as one might eat a chicken leg, the lizard that was once Alice Watson right behind it.

  An EMT, already goosy with fright at being in the same building with the creatures, opened a door and stood for a few seconds, staring in horror. He found his voice. “They’re loose!” he screamed, trying to close the door.

  The manlike creature jammed a thick arm between door and jamb, preventing the closing. The EMT used all his strength to keep the creatures at bay and in the hall. Hissing and spitting, her breath foul enough to stop a stampeding buffalo, Alice threw herself against the door, tearing it from its hinges and knocking the EMT across the room and to the floor, dazed and bruised.

  Doctors Bartlett, Loring, Perry, and Jenkins ran into the hall—luckily at the far end of the long corridor. Alice and the creature turned, spotting the doctors, and began running toward them, hissing and howling, the savage sounds loud in the long hallway.

  The doctors ducked back into the lab just as the deputy stationed outside the clinic ran into the hall, pistol in hand. He emptied the .357 into the backs of the hideous creatures, knocking them spinning and spraying the walls with a stinking greenish-yellowish body fluid. He fumbled for his speed-loader and filled up the wheel. Before he could fire, Alice and the other creature staggered over the ruined body of the nurse and stumbled into a room, slamming the door behind them.

  “They’re in the room right across from you!” the deputy yelled to the doctors, just as the EMT stuck his head into the hall.

  The sound of breaking glass told them all that the creatures had left the building.

  “Call Jim Hunt,” Bartlett yelled to the deputy. “And Max Bancroft. Tell them the . . . creatures are on the loose.”

  * * *

  Jim had driven to the edge of town. He stood over the body of the grocer, Snelling, and shook his head. The light was fading fast and Jim dreaded the coming of night. Like Carl, the chief deputy sensed this night was to be the opening to the gates of Hell.

  “It doesn’t connect,” Jim said. “Snelling was one of the finest men I ever knowed. Just like Ralph Geason. They couldn’t have been tied up in no devil coven.”

  “Devil’s coven!” Pastor Speed snorted. “All that talk is a bunch of nonsense.” He had recovered from the sight of the drunken and foul-mouthed Rodale.

  Jim looked at the bigmouth, unable to hide the contempt in his eyes. Before he could reply, his radio started squawking.

  “Alice Watson and that thing the state police brought in escaped, Chief. They killed Bartlett’s nurse and took off. They’re on the loose.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jim’s temper erupted, bringing the seldom-used profanity to his lips.

  Pastor Speed look on disapprovingly. “What’s that about the Watson girl, Jim?”

  Jim squared his shoulders and let the preacher have it. Bluntly. “The bunch of trash that busted out of the jail grabbed her and raped her. She started changing into some sort of a lizardlike monster shortly after they done it to her. She don’t resemble nothin’ human no more. We brought in a ... creature from out in the Conners Woods. He’s something out of Hell. We had ’em strapped down and sedated over to the clinic. Now they’re gone, on the prowl, probably lookin’ for something to kill and eat. Like what was done to Old Lady Barstow and that poacher out in the woods.”

  Speed laughed in the chief deputy’s face. He patted him on the shoulder . . . a very condescending pat that infuriated Jim. “My dear man, don’t be foolish. Your imagination is running rampant. There are no such things as werewolves and zombies and creatures from the pits and that sort of Hollywood claptrap. Get a grip on yourself, Deputy Hunt. You’re behaving like a child.” He stood in front of Jim, chuckling.

  Jim eyeballed him for a moment, then balled his right hand into a fist and busted the man right in the mouth, knocking the preacher on his ass, in the middle of a mud puddle in the ditch by the side of the road. Chris Speed flopped like a big frog, sputtering and hollering and waving his arms.

  “I been wantin’ to do that for near on to five years,” Jim said. “Damn, but that felt good.”

  “I’ll sue you!” Speed hollered.

  The A-frame was literally crawling with cats of all sizes and description. They were clinging to the screens and to the shingles on the roof; they covered both the front and back porches, yowling and snarling and spitting. The sounds of their claws scratching on the wood and the glass were nearly mind-numbing.

  Sonya’s tough big-city-reporter facade crumbled and fell. She started screaming as fear gripped her in a cold sweaty hand.

  “Watch the windows,” Carl said, as calmly as the situation would permit. “I don’t think they’ll be able to get through both the storm windows and inside windows. I don’t believe they can get a good enough purchase to hurl themselves with enough force at the glass to break it.” I hope, he silently added.

  “There’s thousands of them!” Becky screamed, standing on the ragged edge of hysteria.

  “Hundreds, probably,” Carl corrected, having to raise his voice to be heard over the nerve-stretching yowling of the cats.

  Susie began screaming and pointing at the front door. Several cats’ paws were sticking between the door and the bottom mat.

  Carl walked over to the door and stomped on the paws. The cats outside yowled in pain and jerked their paws out of the tiny space.

  The cats began hurling their bodies against the front and back doors of the A-frame, screaming in rage when they found the doors to be too strong to penetrate.

  Dingo showed all the signs of wanting to get into the thick of it—hair on his back raised, teeth bared in a silent snarl—but he also seemed somewhat subdued, as if knowing he would be torn to bloody ribbons should he venture outside.

  The yowling and high-pitched screaming of the cats continued, mingled with the scratching of hundreds of claws against shingles and wood. The outside window screens were soon torn into shreds, and the cats had no place from which to get a grip on the single-pane security storm windows. Those who had been clinging to the screens began circling the house, many of them digging under the house, to yowl and claw at the underside of the floor.

  “There has to be a logical explanation for their behavior,” Jesse said, raising his voice to be heard over the cats’ wild sounds.

  Carl chose not to reply. Dee looked at the reporter, dislike and contempt in her eyes. Reporters in general were not her favorite people.

  And that feeling was well-deserved, she believed. In her opinion, reporters seldom gave the rich their due for all the good they did, concentrating instead on the life-styles of individuals.

  The yowling and scratching suddenly, as if on some silent command, ceased.

  The abrupt silence was, for a moment, almost as bad as the frantic sounds that had preceded it.

  “Are they gone?” Lib whispered in a very trembly voice.

  Carl looked outside. For a moment, he could see nothing. Then a long tail dropped from the edge of the roof, swishing back and forth. He lifted his eyes to the fence. The top rail was lined with cats, running all the way around the house. He walked to the back porch. The porch floor was a solid blur of silent, staring cats. The front porch floor was the same.

  “Let’s shoot them!” Peter said. “We have guns. Let’s kill them.”

  “It isn’t their fault,” Carl said. “They’re only doing what an ancient god is telling them to do. Kill the god, and the cats will return to their normal behavior.”

  “Ancient god?” Sonya asked.

  “Anya. And her other self, the cat, Pet. Somebody make a fresh pot of coffee and let’s all try to relax. I’ll tell you all what I know.”

  * * *

  The teenagers slipped into the basement of the high sc
hool. Three boys and two girls.

  They all noticed the gamy odor, but thought it to be only a dead rat. They’d all been coming here for months, and the smell of dead rats was not uncommon.

  It really didn’t make any difference to them: In a few moments they’d all be so high a skunk could walk through spraying everything in sight and none of them would notice.

  They lit a couple of candles, turned a small portable radio on, and uncorked and passed the bottles of wine around, then rolled up some grass and laid out several lines of coke, taking turns drinking and toking and snorting.

  After awhile, one boy stood up and walked to a dark corner of the huge basement to take a leak. Those remaining thought they heard an odd sound, then passed it off as nothing more than the creaking of the old school building; it was over fifty years old.

  The boy did not return.

  “Hey, Billy,” a girl called. “What’s happening with you, man?”

  Silence greeted her question. Then an odd ripping sound reached their ears. None of them had ever heard anything quite like it. That was followed by a smacking sound.

  “Hey, Billy!” the girl called. “What’d you doin’ over there, man?”

  What was left of a partially eaten arm was tossed in their midst. The hand was closed into a white-knuckled fist, the last living gesture during the most hideous pain Billy had ever experienced in his short life.

  Boys and girls screamed in shock and fright as something from out of the smoking pits of Hell leaped into the small circle sitting around the candles.

  Ralph grabbed one boy’s head between his clawed paws and twisted, breaking the neck. He backhanded the other boy, the powerful blow fracturing the skull and shattering the jaw. Teeth popped out of the boy’s mouth, rolling and clicking like bloody hard candy on the dirty floor.

  The girls were fear-frozen to the floor, both of them noticing the jutting penis dangling from the creature’s lower belly.

  Ralph looked at the two girls and made his choice: The chunkier one would be the perfect mate. The second one was too skinny.

  He killed her.

  Roseanne began screaming as he tore the clothing from her, positioned her on her knees, and took her with one brutal, hunching lunge.

  Ralph slapped her on the side of the head to silence her screaming. Roseanne got the message and silently endured the animal-like coupling and the clawed hands on her bare shoulders that were scratching her flesh and bloodying her.

  Soon her head was feeling funny, and she found she was losing the ability to reason. She could not remember who she was or where she was or what had happened to the people she was with.

  The metamorphosis had begun.

  Roseanne began her climax. She threw back her head and howled like the beast she had become.

  When the mating was concluded, Ralph went to his lair in the darkness and brought back a dead rat, presenting it to Roseanne. She ate it and grunted her thanks as the tail dangled out of her mouth. With a clawed hand, she stuffed the tail into her mouth and chomped, grinning at her new mate.

  Chapter 24

  Pastor Speed had crawled out of the muddy ditch with as much dignity as he could muster and politely declined a deputy’s invitation to drive him home. He would walk, thank you. He wanted nothing more to do with the sheriffs department at this particular juncture in his life.

  His mouth was swollen and painful where Jim had slugged him, but that was minor compared to his bruised pride—his ass hurt too, where he’d fallen on it.

  He stopped and turned at the sound of a car pulling up and over to the curb. He sighed when he saw it was Chuck Vincent. He wasn’t all that thrilled with the priest. Chuck Vincent was about the most un-ministerlike religious person Chris had even seen. Stomping around in those silly cowboy boots and going dancing and taking a drink or two before dinner. Chuck Vincent was, in Pastor Speed’s opinion, a disgrace to the ministry. He should be, in Pastor Speed’s narrow opinion, disrobed, defrocked, or whatever it was those idol-worshipping Episcopalians did to get rid of a priest.

  Chris Speed had never been in an Episcopalian church in his life, and had about as much knowledge of the faith as a hog has of calculus, but as he was fond of saying, “I have a right to an opinion.”

  “Chris!” Chuck called. “What in the world happened to you? You’re all muddy.”

  Mind your own business, you heathen! Pastor Speed thought. With yet another sigh, he walked to the car. “I, uh, was visiting a sick person and slipped. I’m all right.”

  A sick person with a pretty good left hook, Chuck thought, hiding his smile. “Get in. I might need some help.”

  As they pulled away from the curb, Chris asked, “What kind of help?”

  “Roseanne Nealy’s mother called a few minutes ago. She had just received an anonymous telephone call from someone who told her that Roseanne had been seen going into the high school with a gang of young people. Shortly afterward, the caller said, there had been screaming coming from the basement. She asked if I’d check it out.”

  “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “She tried. All the lines were busy at both the police and sheriffs department. It’s . . . ah, been quite an unusual twenty-four hours, Chris.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Chris said around and through his mushy mouth. “All nonsense, of course.”

  Chuck gave him a quick glance. He’s been told, he thought. And rejected it all. The damn pompous fool. “It isn’t nonsense, Chris. Not at all. The town is in the grips of Satan.”

  “Poppycock and balderdash! Satan is surely here, Chuck, but it’s in the form of filthy books and movies and TV programs, terrible music, all that dirty dancing, lack of direction and discipline among the young people, no patriotism, and dope.”

  He has part of it right, Chuck silently agreed, turning into the high school parking lot and stopping, cutting the engine. But he’s in for a real eye-opener. Should be interesting to see.

  Chuck lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror as headlights flashed behind him. He watched as Tom Malone got out of his car, a shotgun in his hand.

  Chuck reached under his seat and took out a snub-nosed. 38.

  “My heavens, man!” Chris hollered. “That’s a gun!”

  “Sure is,” Chuck said, opening up a half box of shells and dumping them into the front pocket of his jeans.

  “You’re taking this much too far, young man,” the pastor admonished the priest in what he felt was his sternest tone. With his busted and bruised mouth, he sounded like a cross between Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn. “And Tom is carrying a shotgun!” he cried. “What in the world is happening in this town?”

  “I’m probably not the only one who has tried to tell you, Chris. You just won’t listen. You’ve never been able to see past your own pointy, opinionated nose. You damn well better wake up.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that,” Christ blustered. “You . . . hippie!”

  Chuck laughed in his face and got out of the car to greet Tom.

  “What brings you here, Tom?”

  “A phone call. From a woman who refused to give her name. How about you?”

  “Same thing. Kids in the building and screaming?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why do you have that asshole riding around with you?” Tom pointed toward Pastor Speed.

  “I heard that!” Chris hollered.

  Chris Speed was not the most beloved man in Butler, Virginia.

  “If you’re coming with us,” Tom told him, “you’d better drag your butt out the car.”

  Bitching about the lack of respect shown him by certain members of the community—and Episcopalians in general, who were, in Chris’s opinion, ranked right down there beside Catholics, and Jews too—Pastor Speed joined the two men in the darkness of the school parking lot.

  “This is a fools’ mission,” Chris said.

  “Must be,” Tom agreed. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  * * *

&nbs
p; The cats had vanished as silently and swiftly as they had arrived.

  After telling his story, leaving his audience to believe it or not—and from the looks on the faces of the journalists, they didn’t, though it appeared the kids did—Carl had looked outside and then tentatively opened the front door.

  The cats were gone. There was not a trace of them except for the odor that clung silently in the dark night air.

  They gathered on the porch of the A-frame and looked out at what they all knew—and what most would now openly admit—was the deadly but silent night.

  “Where did the cats go?” Becky asked in a hushed tone, standing close to her boyfriend.

  “Most of them went back to being normal cats, probably,” Carl told her, turning his head toward the dark of the surrounding timber, just as the long and wavering howl of a wolf cut the air.

  Dee looked at him. “Why are you smiling, Carl?”

  “I think we’ve been sent some new and powerful allies.”

  “The wolves?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who sent them?” Lib asked.

  “It’s a comforting thought, at least to me, to think that God did.”

  * * *

  “Get a firm grip on your stomach,” the trooper said, handing the just-developed pictures to Jim. “One man in the lab tossed his cookies when these were developed. And you’d all better know this: The governor has been notified of what’s going on here in Reeves County.”

  “What’s he going to do?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s fully convinced that all this is really happening.”

  Jim opened the envelope and looked at the blown-up 8x10’s. His stomach did a slow roll-over at the hideousness. Daly and Tolson both grimaced and paled at the sight. The blow-ups were passed around, all the deputies and city police and state cops taking a look at the gruesome sight of the birthing of a demon child.