How do I know that? he questioned silently.
Sam ran to the porch, throwing open the door. "Mount up!" he said.
"But it's four hours 'til midnight," Wade argued.
"MOUNT UP!" Sam barked at them. His tone moved them into action.
They were outside, by their pickups. Everyone was armed. The eleven stood quietly in the night, listening to the rustle of leaves, the sighing winds from the prairie, and the thudding of their own hearts.
"Going on a camping trip?" the voice came behind them.
The men spun around, hands on the butt of weapons. No one had heard the two men come up. Otto Stockman and Dalton Revere.
"Otto," Sam greeted the man. "Dalton. I've missed you at church lately."
The man spat his contempt, the spittle landing between Sam's booted feet.
A scream cut the night, shattering the illusion of peace.
"What in God's name was that?" Chester asked.
"A nonbeliever," Otto said. "There will be many more before this night is over."
"I thought we were all the nonbelievers?" Wade asked, his flesh goose-pimply from the screaming.
"Oh, no," Revere smiled. "There are many who are reluctant to serve any God with all their hearts. Sam knows, don't you, Sam?"
The minister said nothing.
The screaming was heard again, a hoarse yowling, as if more pain than a human could endure was being forced upon unwilling flesh. Then a choking cry, and the night was silent.
Otto laughed, an evil barking in the evening's murkiness.
"Mrs. Johnson's house," Chester said. "Two houses down." He looked at Otto. "You people are crazy! You're murderers!"
"The mass is almost ready to begin," Dalton said, holding out his hand. "It will be beautiful. Won't you join us? It's your last chance."
"Yes," Otto said. "Join us—do."
"Otto?" Sam pleaded with the man. "What has happened to your faith? To your belief in our God? He hasn't forsaken you. Give this up."
Revere and Stockman laughed. "Your God, Sam," Dalton said, "not ours. Our Master gives pleasure, joy we can touch with our hands, not empty promises. Our God lives; I can touch him, see him. Where is your God?"
"All around us, Dalton. Everywhere. I shouldn't have to tell you that." He looked at Otto. "Where is your wife?"
The man grinned. "Being serviced by Servants of the Master. She's beginning to come around to the pleasures of our God."
Jane Ann stood by Sam's side. She moved closer to him as Dalton's eyes traveled over her body, lingering at her breasts, her crotch, moving, undressing her with his possessed mind.
"Being serviced?" Wade questioned. "What do you mean?"
The man rubbed his crotch and grinned, "We've been having a party at my house this afternoon."
"Your wife is being—serviced?" Anita grimaced. "Otto, you're disgusting!"
A strange chant drifted through the night. A hundred or more voices chanting in the distance, in unison. It was the chant Sam had faintly heard on the wind that night at Tyson's Lake. Now he could understand the word, and that word was DIE.
"Get into the trucks," Sam ordered,
"You'll never leave this town alive," Dalton warned him. "I'm giving you all a chance, don't you see? We don't want to harm you; we just want you. The time is now. He is here. He has returned."
"He's always been here," Sam said, disgust in his voice. He knew there was no point in attempting to try to change Dalton's mind.
"You're all fools!" Otto cried. "Fools! Listen! Look around you. We've come for you. Join us—the pleasures are wonderful; there for the taking. Look!"
A hundred or more men, women, and children had gathered at both ends of the street, blocking it. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Sam knew them all. Their eyes were glowing red with evil, and they chanted: Die!
Dalton glared at Doris. She shrank from his lusting eyes. "I've always wanted to fuck a Jew bitch. To personally thank you for killing that pig, Christ. I will, this night." He reached for the woman.
Miles acted before he thought, his pistol jumped into his hand. The .38 barked twice, the slugs hitting Dalton in the chest. Miles screamed curses as the man fell backward into the street. Survival took over, as pictures of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz filled Miles' brain.
"Not again!" he screamed, emptying his pistol into Dalton's twitching body.
Doris pulled him back, toward their truck.
Survival gripped them all, shoving civilized mores to the rear.
Otto ran screaming into the night. "Kill them! Kill the men. We want the women!"
The mob moved forward, chanting, "Die Die Die!"
"Roll it!" Sam shouted, and the eleven ran for their trucks. "You drive," Sam told Jane Ann. He reached for the Thompson, jacking a round in the chamber. "Don't stop for anything. Just roll right over them."
"Sam!"
"Do it!" he shouted. "Move!"
She jerked the transmission into gear and roared into the night, toward the growing mob of devil-worshippers at the end of the street. Fifty yards from them, Sam leaned out the window and pulled the trigger, the SMG on full auto. The slugs sparked through the night, slamming men women and teenagers backward, to lie jerking on the street.
And still they came.
Jane Ann gripped the wheel and roared into the crowd, shutting her mind to the crunching and breaking of bones and the slick pop of mauled flesh. Several of the possessed climbed onto the truck, in the bed, on the hood, on the running boards. Sam hammered at them with his big fists, slashing at them with his big-bladed knife, finally jerking out his .45, firing at point-blank range.
"Hard left!" he shouted.
She spun the wheel, sending the man in the bed of the truck flying through the air. He landed on a spike of a wrought-iron fence, the point impaling him, driving through his chest. He died screaming, dangling from the fence, his legs jerking.
The little caravan was clear of one street. "Head for the south Bad Lands!" Sam yelled.
They roared through town, past burning churches and bonfires filled with Bibles and church hymnals and pews. They screamed past blockades set up by the Satan-worshippers, cutting across yards and down side streets. Sam glanced behind him. Everyone was with him. For now.
"Sam!" Jane Ann screamed. "The road is blocked."
A deputy crouched behind a patrol car, grinning at them in the headlights' glare, his teeth yellow and fanged. Sam leveled the .45 and shot the man/thing in the face, blowing away part of his head. The deputy fell backward, but he would not die. Appearing as a terrible apparition, the bloody thing staggered to its feet, lurching in front of the truck, arms outstretched, fingers working in killing anticipation.
"Roll over it!" Sam yelled. "Smash it!"
Jane Ann felt sickness well in her throat. She fought it back and floor-boarded the truck, hitting the creature with the front bumper, rolling over it. The others did the same, until the man/thing was a bloody, smashed smear in the street.
But it would not die.
As the caravan roared into the night, clear of Whitfield, none of them witnessed the hideousness pull itself to the curb and slide disgustingly into a gutter opening, leaving a trail of crimson behind it. In the darkness of the sewer it hid itself, under the town of Whitfield, to wait, to heal.
The caravan was out of Whitfield, heading for the Bad Lands. Five vehicles, eleven people, racing to the unknown, running from horror.
The town soon became an open pocket of death as the possessed went from house to house, searching out those not of themselves. Only a few would escape. They would crouch in their basements, in the darkness, with their fear. Only a few, hiding.