He buried Mr. Sladder’s remains, then dug another hole. The low yellow moon glowed through tall trees, dappling the hidden grove. Besser stood in supervision with a Coleman lantern; he looked a bit pale. The sister stood right next to him, grinning. Tom dug the second hole with the lackadaise of a gardener hoeing a bed of petunias.
Penelope was blubbering something. She lay boneless beside the hole, a rubbery mass of flesh. She smelled good, though, like barbecued pork or something. He could see her collapsed face, her widely spread eyes, the formless mouth trying to talk. Her tongue lolled out and sputtered, slobbering.
Besser was paling at the sight.
Break time, Tom thought. He leaned against the shovel and chugged more Spaten—nothing like a cold beer after hard work, whether you were mowing the lawn, laying shingles, or burying girls alive.
“She’d been in some of my classes,” Besser lamented.
“Too bad she didn’t take,” Tom said.
“We’ve got it all worked out now.” Besser looked fearfully to the hooded sister. “No more mistakes.”
A froth of foam and bubbles drooled from Penelope’s mouth. What a grosser. The gelatinous loops of her arms and legs slopped uselessly, like tentacles on a speared octopus. Tom figured she was folded in half backward, her big wet breasts lolling at her armpits. At least she smelled like good barbecue.
The sister pointed to the hole.
“Bury her,” Besser said.
Tom pushed her into the grave with his boot sole. She didn’t fall in, she oozed in, like muck. Besser held up the lantern and groaned when he looked into the hole.
At last Penelope’s words blubbered up. “Plub plub please don’t bulup bulup bury me, Tom!”
“Don’t let the minor fact that she’s still alive dissuade your heart,” Besser regretted to Tom. “It must be done.”
“W where’s where’s my blay blay baby?”
Besser cleared his throat. “Regrettably, dear, your baby’s dead. Don’t blame yourself. You simply didn’t take.”
“I lyly rup want m m m my baby!”
Where was it? Tom looked around. Ah, there. The jellyish thing was crammed in the corner of the box. Tom picked it up by what he guessed were its feet and held it up to the lantern light. It hung limp as a rooster’s wattle.
Penelope blubbered a high pitched shriek.
—Give me it! the sister ordered. She held out her white hands.
Besser recoiled. “Oh, for God’s sake. Please.”
Tom shrugged. He gave it to the woman in black. Grinning, she let its bloated head swing back and forth like depended pizza dough, throwing a pendulous shadow. Tom watched with little interest. It wasn’t like it was a real baby, right? Not like the kind he’d been once, not like the kind mothers cuddled and loved. Not really anyway.
“Please,” Besser objected, nausea in his face. “Please don’t.”
—Shut up! the sister said like an irked grade-school girl. Her bleating wet giggles palpitated up. She turned the dead baby thing in her white hands and squeezed its head till its eyes popped out.
Penelope was flopping madly in her hole, shrieking, trying to get out. Motherly love, Tom supposed. He was amazed at her sudden ability to move. For a moment he feared she might actually churn herself out of the grave.
Besser winced. “Just throw it in the hole. Please don’t—”
Gnarled doglike teeth bared through the sister’s grin. She bit into the top of the dead baby’s head with a sound much like biting into a crisp apple. The sister sucked its brain till the boneless bag for a head collapsed. Then she giggled, munching. Someone should teach her some manners, Tom thought. Judith Martin would shit railroad ties if she could see this.
Wet smacking sounds followed, and slurping. The sister chewed her meal heartily; a big lump slid down her throat when she swallowed.
Revolted, Besser dropped the lantern. He stumbled away rubber kneed, fell between some trees, and vomited in grand style. Now, this was not something you got to see every day, a three hundred pound college professor throwing up like a sludge pump in the middle of the woods. Watching a black cloaked woman eat a dead baby’s brains wasn’t something you got to see every day either. Even Tom had to raise a brow at these shenanigans. The sister’s giggles splayed out into the grove, quite loudly. Tom still hadn’t gotten used to that awful sound—that giggling. Who could giggle while eating a baby’s brains? They were one wild crew, that was for sure. Yeah, real party animals.
She flung the head sucked baby into the hole. Splap. Penelope was still flopping in throes of absolute amorphous rage. Her high pitched blubbering shriek blurted out loud like a faulty train whistle.
—Bury her.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tom said. The shovel bit into the ground. He tossed in the first load. Ba bump! Penelope squealed again. Tom dropped the second load into her opened mouth. That should quiet her down some, the little dickens. She gagged and coughed up wet clumps of earth.
—This is so much fun, isn’t it, Tom?
“Yes, ma’am, it sure is. I haven’t had this much fun since the last Polanski Festival.”
He buried Penelope without reservation. He whistled that great old Guess Who song “Share the Land” as his shovel gradually filled the hole. Burying girls alive wasn’t exactly fun for the whole family, yet despite the grimness of the task, Tom supposed it was a fair trade.
Shit, he thought. For immortality, I’ll dig graves from here to Seattle.
—
CHAPTER 16
An alarm was blaring.
Lydia sat up naked in bed. She could still hear the alarm, but then she realized it was only the telephone. The clock read 5 A.M.
She snapped up the phone and yelled, “What!”
“You have a nice sleep?” a voice inquired.
This was outrageous; it was Chief White. “How come you’re calling me at five in the morning?” she complained. “You gave me the day off, remember?”
“I need ya to do me somethin’. I’d have the night boys do it ’cept they been out all night flaggin’ traffic. Some stoner done rolled fifteen thousand gallons of super unleaded all over the Route. My boys are plumb wore out and stinkin’ fierce of gas.”
“Okay, Chief. What do you want me to do?”
“Go out to agro. Them state guys are finally packing it up. Some geek named Latin is runnin’ the show. They’ll be trucking out by nine.”
Trucking out? “Chief, what—”
“They got a prelim for us. Go pick it up.”
“All right,” Lydia groaned.
“Good girl. Report to me when you’re done. Now, this Latin guy’s got a bug up his bum the size of my Buick. Be nice to him or else he won’t tell you squat. Nose around, try and see what they’ve been up to. Use your” —White gave a typical hick laugh— “your feminine powers of persuasion.”
Lydia rang off, sputtering. White didn’t want to go himself because he figured Lydia’s tits and ass would prompt a more cooperative response. She suited up quickly, enjoying the early morning silence. Dawn had not yet broken when she pulled into the agriculture/agronomy site. State cadets were loading signs into a van. “Quarantine Area, Do Not Enter,” they read. Three semi rigs were parked in a row behind the stables. A state sergeant directed her to a wheeled trailer. Gas powered generators pumped racket into the air, like jackhammers. But the electricity had been fixed. Why would they need generators?