The Devil's Touch Read online

  "Turn on the floodlights," Sam told Noah.

  With a pop, the outside grounds around the estate were bright as day.

  Without electricity producing the current.

  Sam keyed his handy-talkie. "Everybody in position on the roof?"

  They were.

  "Stay alert," Sam cautioned them. "Their last rush will be coming tonight. And don't ask me how I know. I just know."

  The firing on the house continued without letup, as it had since seven o'clock that morning. And judging from the occasional screams, the bullets were taking their toll, both mentally and physically.

  "Here they come!" Monty called from the roof. "What are we going to do when they shoot out the floodlights?"

  "Either change the bulbs or fight in the dark," Sam yelled his reply.

  And then there was no time left for conversation. The Devil worshippers made no attempt at fancy maneuvering. Theirs was a straight on, frontal, human-wave type of assault. And they paid dearly for it.

  Every weapon in the house had been fully loaded that afternoon; every spare clip had been loaded to capacity. But even with all that going for them, the Devil worshippers came very close, several times, to overwhelming the Christians by sheer numbers. Only the high fence around the mansion prevented that.

  After an hour, hearing became impaired from the constant roaring of multiple weapons; shoulders were bruised and sore from the pounding of high-powered rifles and shotguns; eyes were red and smarting from gunsmoke.

  And still the devotees to the Devil hurled their bodies at the Christians in a frenzied attempt to overpower them. All thoughts of taking Sam and Nydia and Little Sam alive were gone. Revenge and death were uppermost in the minds of those committed to serving the Dark One.

  And if the coven members had given their plan some deeper thought, had carefully considered all aspects of the assault, they could have easily overwhelmed the small band of defenders. But determination and cool heads have many times in the past prevailed over brute force.

  And so it was this time.

  By ten o'clock that night, the human waves had ceased. An eerie quiet fell over the body-littered land.

  "Now what?" Noah was heard to question the stillness.

  A clump-thump was heard coming up the street, followed by a shuffling type of step; many feet.

  "What the hell?" Monty said.

  "The undead," Father Le Moyne said quietly. "They are sending the undead after us."

  Sam ran to the rear of the house, calling for Joe to come help him.

  "What's up, Sam?"

  "Help me make some Molotov cocktails. Bullets won't kill those—things. But fire will."

  Siphoning gas from Sam's truck, the men quickly fashioned the fire bombs. They ran back to the front of the mansion.

  "Oh, Dear God in Heaven!" John Morton said, pointing to the street.

  All heads turned.

  He was pointing at Ann; at the hammer still tied around her severed ankle. Ann stood beside Max, Lisa LaMeade beside her. Will and Judy and Dan and Jerry and Marie stood behind them.

  Pete LaMeade stood behind the lines of undead, grinning at the house.

  "That's Mommy" Jeanne shrieked. "Mommy!"

  The girl was off and running toward the rotted form of her mother before anyone in the house could stop her.

  The mother smiled grotesquely and opened her flesh-decaying arms in a welcoming embrace for her living daughter.

  SIX

  "I think the same thing is happening here as happened in Canada," Janet said to Princess Xaviere. "God, or one of His asshole friends is helping Balon; blocking out our Master. 1 think we have to face up to the fact that we have lost."

  "All is not lost!" the Princess snapped. "The undead are out there now. They—"

  "They will do nothing," Janet said flatly. "I am almost certain Sam Balon has been blessed."

  "No!"

  "Yes, Princess. And it is time to consider our leaving this dreadful place."

  "I so wanted Balon's seed within me," Xaviere sighed.

  You wanted his cock in you, is what you wanted, Janet thought, but thought so very carefully, blocking out any mind-projection. "There will be another time. In another place."

  "You're right, of course, Janet," the Princess reluctantly capitulated. "When we reach safety, we will begin immediately formulating plans to capture Sam Balon."

  "Yes, Princess."

  Xaviere Flaubert looked toward the Fox Estate. "There will be another time, dear Father Sam. I promise you that."

  "Who do we take with us?" Janet questioned.

  "Jon Le Moyne, of course. Jimmy, too. Your earth parents. One or two others. I don't care. I just want to leave this dismal place of failure."

  "Yes, Princess."

  Joe grabbed Jeanne's ankles and dragged her down from the fence, throwing her to the ground. Mille reached her sister and sat on her.

  Sam lit a bottle of gas and hurled it toward the open-armed undead woman. The gas exploded at the dead woman's feet, completely covering her in flames. Her husband screamed his outrage and charged the fence, climbing over the bodies stacked on the street side of the fence. Sam burned half a clip into the man, knocking him backward, but not killing him.

  Pete LaMeade jumped to his feet, smoking holes in his chest. He grinned at Sam. His grin exposed needle-pointed teeth and a bright red tongue, swollen with blood. He once more charged at Sam.

  Sam threw a cocktail at him, the bottle breaking on the man's chest, the gasoline igniting, covering the man with fire. Pete screamed and ran into the night. The others, now confused and frightened, followed him, lumbering and staggering and clumping away into the night.

  Joe and Sam helped Mille with her sister, leading the sobbing young woman back to the house.

  Nydia met her husband. She was grimy with gunsmoke, her eyes red-rimmed from smoke and fatigue. "It's over, isn't it, Sam?"

  "Almost," he replied. "The beginning of the end starts at dawn."

  FRIDAY MORNING

  "Sam!" Monty shouted. "Father Le Moyne is gone!"

  Sam looked toward the heavens. "No," he said softly. "His job here was over. He just went home."

  "What?" Noah asked.

  Dawn was lighting the eastern sky, spreading traces of red and pink and gray against a backdrop of purple.

  "Father Le Moyne was Father Sam," the young man told a stunned group of survivors.

  "Your Dad told you?" Nydia asked, coming to him, to take her husband's hand.

  "Yes. He and Father Sam left together, about fifteen minutes ago. Dad said neither of them would be back. It's up to us now, Nydia. You, me, Little Sam."

  "Little Sam is—"

  "All right. Like you, Nydia, the dark side of his being will only serve to make him stronger in his faith."

  "The people at the Giddon House?" Viv asked.

  "There is no one there," Sam told them. "Xaviere and a few of the others slipped out during the night. But I will meet them again. That is my purpose for being."

  "Lordy!" Joe said. "Your daddy told you that?"

  "No," the tall young man said. "Someone else."

  "Jesus!" Monty blurted.

  Sam looked at him and smiled. "Close," he said.

  FRIDAY. NOON.

  Even Joe was shocked when Sam calmly and without any display of emotion lifted his AK and shot the man in the stomach. The man flopped on the littered street, screaming in pain.

  "Sam—" Monty said.

  "We killed probably half of this coven," Sam explained. "The rest are confused and in hiding. Don't ever think we aren't in grave danger. But we've got them on the run. They know they've been deserted by their leaders, and they don't know what to do or where to go, because they've discovered they can't get out. But I'm going to help them."

  The two men looked at him.

  "1 am going to destroy this town," Sam announced, with no more emotion than if asking someone to pass the butter.

  "We gather up all the fifty-five
gallon drums in this community," Sam said. "Get all the heating oil and gasoline tanker trucks left around here. Drain every filling station storage tank. Fill the drums. There are sump pumps in this town. Let's find them and get to work."

  SATURDAY

  It had been a quiet night. Eerie, knowing the community was still filled with coven members, but still quiet, with no action taken against the Christians.

  Sam gathered the little band of survivors around him. He had broken them down into three teams of five each. They all knew what they had to do.

  "As soon as you have completed your tasks," Sam told the group, "get out of this community. For it's not going to exist much longer. Get your stories straight between you; keep them simple, for you are going to have to live with them the rest of your lives. All the authorities have to know is that you people survived a great tragedy. That much will be the truth. You can't tell them you've been fighting God's war; you'd all end up in the nut house. So I would just tell them you managed to survive a great fire. The stories you tell are up to you. It's doubtful any of you will ever see Nydia, Little Sam, or myself again. Everybody ready? O.K., let's do it."

  The teams began pumping raw gasoline and heating oil into the sewer system of Logandale. Thousands of gallons of flammable liquids were dumped into mains. Open drums of gas and oil were left all over the town. Anywhere a heating oil tank was found, the contents were drained onto the ground.

  "Good God, don't nobody light a cigarette," Joe warned. "Don't scrape no metal against nothing that'll cause a spark. We'd all go up like a Roman candle."

  "That's the general idea," Sam said.

  "Lordy, Lordy!" Joe said.

  When only one small tank truck was all that was left, Sam told his people to get going. But they were reluctant to leave the young man's side. Sam had led them through a living nightmare, and all had grown accustomed to taking his commands.

  Sam looked at the small gathering of Christians. So very few of us, he thought. Out of a population of probably more than four thousand—this is it. Three or four hundred others had been brutally killed, tortured to death, but that still leaves several thousand whose faith was so weak they reached toward the hands of the Dark One, forsaking the Living God.

  Dad was right: Heaven will be sparsely populated.

  "I don't want to make this sound like an old TV show," Sam said. "But I have a mission. Nydia, Little Sam, and me. 1 don't know where we're going to be sent. But wherever it is, we'll go."

  Sam shook hands with everyone, receiving several kisses from the women. Nydia embraced and kissed them all.

  Sam looked at Noah. "You're in charge, Noah. Get them out of here."

  Noah stood holding hands with Susie. He nodded. "God go with you all," he said. He turned to the others. "Let's go, people. We've got some planning to do. And I've got several books to write."

  Sam and his family stood and watched them leave, heading out of town. He waited fifteen minutes.

  "Drive my pickup," he told Nydia. "I'll drive the last tanker truck. Meet you at the city limits."

  Sam opened the drains and let raw gas spill onto the street as he drove slowly out of the Devil's town. He was aware of being watched; he expected at any second to be fired upon. But nothing happened.

  He could not understand that. Then one reason came to him: They are afraid of God's Warrior. Hate has changed to fear and turned inward on the followers of the Dark One.

  "I should feel pity," he murmured. "But I do not. I cannot."

  And he knew then his future was set before him. His destiny was clearly written.

  On the outskirts of town, Sam got behind the wheel of his pickup. He dropped the pickup into gear and tossed a match into the puddle of gas. With a whoosh the gas ignited and fire raced down the center of the highway as Sam floorboarded the pedal.

  Less than a quarter of a mile into safety, a great ball of fire leaped into the sky. The force of the explosion actually lifted the rear wheels of the pickup off the concrete for a second. Sam fought the wheel for control, drove on another half mile, then pulled off the road and looked back.

  "I don't think that was all gas causing that," he said to Nydia.

  He pulled out onto the highway and pointed the nose of the Chevy westward.

  Nydia glanced at his rugged features. "Where are we going, Sam, and what is going to happen to us?"

  "God only knows," was his truthful reply.

  EPILOGUE

  The survivors kept their stories simple. They had survived; been in the right place at the right time, that was all. No, none of them knew exactly what happened. But it was terrible—a horrible thing. No, they didn't want to sell their stories to any publisher.

  They just wanted to be left alone; to try to forget.

  Monty and Viv moved to Vermont, where Monty found a job as chief of police in a small village.

  Joe married Mille and moved to Kentucky.

  Noah married Susie, rebuilt his writers' colony and returned to his work as a novelist.

  Richard Hasseling married Desiree and moved to Mississippi, where he now pastors a small church.

  Byron Price married Ginny and moved to Wyoming.

  John Morton and Barbara worked out their problems and moved to Tennessee.

  Jeanne is in high school in Kentucky. She lives with Joe and Mille.

  And Sam, Nydia, and Little Sam are on the road. They wait for instructions from a Higher Authority. They know where the Daughter of Darkness and her court went. Another coven is being established. And they know it will have to be destroyed.

  They wait.

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