Peerce swore. White smacked the wheel and glared at Wade. “I suppose you’re gonna tell me they’re vampires, right?”
“You said it, I didn’t. But there’s this thing out at the grove that looks like a coffin on end. And Besser told me that these girls—sisters, he called them—can’t live in sunlight.”
Peerce had a frown baked into his face. “He’s pullin’ our dicks, Chief. There ain’t no grove or no cults. He’s lyin’.”
“Besser?” White backtracked. “Besser told you this?”
“That’s right. He’s part of it, and so are Jervis and Winnifred Saltenstall. They’re all members of the cult.”
“I don’t know what kind of drugs you been smokin’, St. John, but you gotta be crazy to think I’ll believe two respected faculty members belong to some satanic cult. I don’t believe in vampires, and I don’t believe in the fuckin’ devil, so just shut yer yap.”
“If you think I’m nuts, how come you’re going to the grove?”
“’Cause I got two eyewitnesses that link Jervis Phillips to several murders, and you say he might be at this goddamn grove of yours, so that’s where we’re goin’!”
Fine, Wade thought. In a few more minutes, they were there. White groaned as his loaded cruiser rolled through the logging track, branches scraping the paint. He parked in the junk heaped clearing. “Check your heat,” he ordered. White checked his fourteen shot Browning. Porker checked his AMT .45. Peerce checked his giant Ruger Blackhawk. Then they checked their backup pieces.
“Hey, fellas,” Wade asked. “Don’t I get a gun?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” White answered. “Peerce, bring the gasser too. If Phillips is hidin’ in these here woods, we’ll gas him out.”
Peerce loaded a 37mm CM 55 tear gas gun. Then Porker doled out flashlights and they all got out. “Christ!” Peerce complained. “Damn place smells worse than a Georgia hoghouse!”
You ought to know, Wade thought. “Take a look over here.”
“Graves,” Porker muttered.
Wade grazed his light over the mounds. “Someone’s been here in the last few hours. There were only two graves earlier.”
“Now there’s four.” Peerce demonstrated the ability to count.
“And look—” Wade shined his light over by the shovel. “Empty Kirin bottles. Jervis drinks Kirin.”
“Porker, you see that shovel?” White said.
“Yeah.”
“Get to work.”
Porker whitened. “Aw, Chief, come on. I don’t wanna—”
“Dig them up later,” Wade interrupted. “First we have to—”
“St. John” —now it was White’s turn to interrupt— “so far all I see is a couple of piles of dirt and some beer bottles. I don’t see no cult, and I don’t see no vampires.”
Peerce slapped the back of Wade’s head. “And what about the coffin, St. John? You said there’s a coffin out here.” Next he gave Wade’s ear a twist. Wade yelped.
Hands on hips, White asked, “Where’s Jervis Phillips?”
“Look, I only said he might be here,” Wade protested. “But I’m telling you, once you see the grove yourselves—”
“You mean this ain’t it?”
Wade smiled darkly. “I mean the other grove.”
White bit into a cigar. “All right. Lead the way.”
Wade led the way, with pleasure, past the tires and junk, to the trail. “Watch your step, boys. This isn’t exactly the red carpet treatment.”
Porker moaned.
Peerce yelled “Christ!” repeatedly, as they all began to crunch over the rot soft possums.
“They’re all over the place!” White complained.
“This is nothing, Chief. Wait’ll you see the rest.”
They grimly followed the trail of carcasses. Porker asked “If Phillips is out here, what do we do?”
“What’choo think we do?” Peerce contributed.
“We kill him,” White said. “He’s a killer so we kill him.”
“Killing Jervis isn’t going to be easy,” Wade pointed out.
“Why?”
Wade smiled. “Because he’s already dead.”
“Goddamn it, St. John!” White flared. “I knew this was a crock of shit! Now you’re tellin’ us Phillips is dead?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. Dead as in…the walking dead.”
Peerce slammed Wade against a tree, his ham fist hovering. “I’m beggin’ ya, Chief! Lemme pop him! He’s makin’ damn fools of all of us.”
Then Porker screamed.
He’d strayed to the end of the trail. White and Peerce rushed to see what he was screaming about. Wade, of course, already knew.
The grove’s perversions had thickened, even in the few hours since he and Lydia had been here. Agape, the three cops clung to each other as they stared into the impossible morass. The green fog was darker now, a milky stew. Dense, unearthly foliage glimmered in the low moonlight. Every branch, every swollen leaf, pod, and flower hung thickly with ropes of slime. Things like cattails sprouted tall from the lake of fog, bowed by the weight of strange fruit and pulsating seed sacks. In the middle of the clearing, atop the risen hillock, stood the bizarre oblong box.
“You hayseed motherfuckers believe me now?” Wade asked.
The slack jawed police made no response. Everything was shifting, growing in minute increments, joints of weeds and eldritch tree limbs lengthening in crunching movements as if in pain. Fist sized bugs crawled up sweating tree trunks, scoring the fleshlike bark. Clusters of faced mushrooms shuddered, breathing, and lumps of fungus glowed in the dark.
“P Porker,” White ordered.
“Yuh yuh yeah, Chief?”
“Get out there. Check it out.”
“Yuh yuh you gotta be crazy, Chief.”
“Get out there, you big creamcake!” White kicked Porker in his tremendous rump. “Check it out!”
“I wouldn’t send anyone out there,” Wade advised.
“Shut up! Peerce, get out there! This fat baby’s got no balls. Let’s see if you do!”
Peerce stood unsteadily, looking at the green fog, then back to White. He took a breath and stepped out.
“There’s things in that fog,” Wade warned.
“Things?” Peerce queried, looking back. He waded out. It was like a green swamp; the fog had risen to midthigh now. Black cane stalks swayed to and fro, acrawl with noxious bugs. From some of the plants hung fattened seedpods with drooling—and distressingly human—lips. “Things,” Peerce muttered again. Now he was ten yards out. “I think I can see ’em.”
Yes, they all could. The grove’s wildlife, no doubt, had taken note of them. Wade spotted ghost shapes of things roving beneath the surface—fog vermin. Scuttling parasites feasted on dead possum bellies, and waddling things like groundhogs, lacking heads, scampered about, raising trails of mist. But worst of all were the gilled snake things, which seemed to swim vigorously beneath the fogtop.
“Bring him back, you idiot,” Wade said. “Those things bite.”
White smirked, then yelped as one of the fat pinch faced spiders lowered itself on a line of snot. It tried to bite White on the nose. Wade batted it away, laughing.
Then Peerce began to howl.
He was jumping, struggling. One of the fog snakes had affixed its flat sucker mouth to Peerce’s crotch. He tore it off, along with his zipper, and then another snake latched onto his ass.
“Help me!” he pleaded.
“Porker! Get out there and help Peerce!”