Wade shot the half-Beast with his .38. But the .38 did not have the knock-down power of Sam's .45. The small creature fell backward against a stall wall, shuddered, and charged at Sam. The minister jerked his .45 from the holster, leveled the muzzle chest high, and pulled the trigger three times. The creature flipped backward as if hit with a mighty foot and bounced off a wall, dead.
Sam ran to Wade's side, jerking him toward the door. He shoved him outside. "Get out of here!"
Sam backed out of the barn as snarling rolled to him, coming from closed stalls. Roaming Beasts had chosen the Sorenson ranch to hide during the day. Sam slammed a fresh clip in the Thompson and emptied it into the barn, into dusty forms. Screaming filled the barn as Sam yelled over his shoulder, "Chester! Cocktails—now!''
Before leaving camp, the men had prepared a dozen Molotov cocktails, whiskey bottles filled with gasoline and a small bit of flour, with a cloth fuse sticking from the top. The flour, wet, would stick to whatever it struck, burning like napalm.
Chester threw three of the bottles into the barn, the flammable liquid exploding as they smashed against the inside wall, turning the barn into an inferno. As the Beasts attempted to escape the flames, they were shot down.
The cocktails, igniting with the dust particles in the barn, acted as a super bomb, blowing the building apart, the walls and roof caving in. Some . . . thing, some non-human form, not a Beast, but yet not a human, crawled from the broken beams and burning walls into the sunlight, its entire body ablaze. It screeched and howled in the light, drumming its bare feet on the ground, then died.
Anita, crouched behind a pickup truck, vomited. The nausea was infectious—as it almost always is—and many of the others followed suit. After a moment, there was heavy coughing and mumbled apologies.
Sam jarred them all when he roared, "Burn the bodies. Drag them in a pile, pour gas on them and burn them!"
When the bodies had been dragged into a makeshift funeral pyre, saturated with gas, and blazing, Sam said, "Wade! Take the point, head straight for Little River Ranch, and don't slow up. We've got the High of combat going now, so we're going in shooting. Move it!"
Jimmy Perkins screamed out his pleasure as he beat the naked Judy with a piece of rope, marking her white body with red welts, punishing her as Nydia had promised him he could. He fell on her, working out his rage, abusing her with his fists.
"It's always the same," Wilder said to Nydia. They watched their newest convert from a window of the parsonage. "The play never changes, only the characters. Humans never change. They always want what is forbidden them by their God. Centuries of it is beginning to bore me. Of course, he'll sodomize her next. How droll."
And Jimmy did just that, pulling his ex-girlfriend to her knees, mounting her. She screamed her pain at his sudden intrusion.
"That's why they are humans, is it not?" Nydia asked moodily. "And is that not the reason we are here?"
Wilder looked at her, irritation in his expression. "Must I endure another of your deathless lectures on human behavior?" The witch laughed, a dark brooding bark of little humor. "I seem to recall you enjoy the rear passage, Black."
"But of course," he smiled. "Our Master does not condemn it."
"Now who is lecturing whom?"
His smile broadened as Judy began enjoying the sensation of pain/pleasure.
"Animals," Wilder said. "All humans are but a cut above the animals."
"You bore me, Black. Perhaps you've been here on earth too long?"
"I was thinking the same thing, my dear." And then he was gone, vanishing without a trace.
Wilder was much older than Nydia, and much more proficient at his craft, but Nydia was no longer afraid of him. She had a plan. And she had talked with her Master about that plan, and he had agreed, chuckling.
She walked into her bedroom, leaving behind her the muffled sounds of pain and pleasure in the front yard, being witnessed by a crowd of Satan-worshippers that had gathered to watch. They urged Jimmy on.
Sitting on her bed, the witch projected her thoughts to the Master, and he, laughing, gave her permission, adding some thoughts of his own.
"Balon!" she licked her lips. "But how is it possible?"
All things are possible, the deep rumbling filled her head.
"But, Black-?"
He wishes to return to me, so let him be destroyed and have his wish. Balon will do it. Oh, what a coup this will be! What a child will spring from it!
And the rumblings changed into dark laughter.
"But how?" Nydia questioned. "When? And afterward?"
I will tell you, he spoke to her.
And she smiled at his words filling her head.
The caravan had come upon yet another band of roaming lunatics from the asylum, blocking the trail to Little River Ranch, waving clubs and drooling nonsense at the trucks and their occupants.
Then they attacked, leaving the men and women no choice. They opened fire. Doctor King reluctantly raised his carbine and squeezed the trigger. Afterward, he openly and unashamedly wept.
"We'll pay for this," he said to no one in particular. "In some way, someday, we'll pay." And the caravan moved on, leaving the prairie to deal with the lumpy bodies sprawled in the knee-high grass.
The trucks seemed to snarl out of nowhere, hitting the Little River ranch house at three o'clock in the afternoon. Herman heard them coming, roaring in. He rose from the bed where he had been loving the young girl, Jean.
"What's that?" the teenager questioned, still jerking on the bed. "Come back! Don't leave me yet—I got to come!"
Herman ran naked to the front door, kicking sleeping people out of his way. Those in the throes of fornication did not look up. He threw open the door in time to see a sputtering stick of dynamite taped to a quart bottle of gasoline come at him. It was the last thing he witnessed on this earth as the gas and dynamite exploded, ripping the cowboy to shredded meat, demolishing the living room, setting the house on fire.
Pip and Mack ran out the back door and were met by Chester's yammering Greaser. More dynamite was thrown through the windows, and the house turned into crumpled ruins.
Using Molotov cocktails, Sam set every building on the grounds blazing. Anything or anyone attempting to escape was shot.
Pat Zagone ran screeching from the burning bunkhouse, where she had been entertaining a half dozen men. Her long hair was on fire. A thought wormed its way into Sam's brain: If the devil rules a fiery pit, why then, are these servants of his screaming from the flames?
He had no answer.
He shot her.
A Beast lunged from the burning barn. Jane Ann lifted the shotgun, booming off three rounds, stopping the creature flat in its clawed tracks, flinging it backward, to lie flopping and dying on the ground.
The teenager, Jean, slipped from the back bedroom of the destroyed home, running naked through the creek, screaming curses at her attackers.
She ran through the grass, fleet as a ng colt, running out of rifle range.
No one noticed just who it was, her cursing not audible above the crackling flames and the rattle of gunfire.
The heat from the burning buildings drove Sam and his followers back. They stood on a low hill, watching the buildings burn to the ground.
Jean lay panting in the grass, a half mile from the scene of destruction, cursing at her attackers, snarling low. She had a feeling in her guts that she had better find a place to hide until this was over, one way or the other. She could always come back, pretending she had been taken away against her will.
She smiled, her face pressed against the earth. Yes, that was the way to handle this.
Yes, a voice filled her head, and she knew who was speaking to her. That is the way. Hide, until I call you. There will be another day, another time