“You…you’re not going to open the door, are you?” Her voice was filled with appalling fear.
He reached for her in the dark, found her shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, I’m not opening that door until I know damn sure that the cavalry has arrived. I want to hear bugles blowing.”
She leaned her head against his arm, an act entirely devoid of flirtation. It was based entirely on the need to believe in the solidity of hope. Foree stroked her hair, calming her the way he would soothe a frightened child. The booth was so intensely dark that all that was left to the cowering survivors was patience and prayer.
4
“Anything in there?”
“Lotta corpses.”
The vampire who had once been a real estate salesman opened the door to the lecture hall so his companion, who had once been the assistant football coach at Pinelands College, could look inside. The room was awash in blood. It streaked the walls, pooled on the floors, glistened on the faces and bodies of the dead people who lay scattered on the floor or slumped in chairs.
“Someone had fun,” said the real estate man. “Looks like eighty, ninety kills. Shame we missed it.”
The coach smiled. “The cleanup guys should be here soon, then we’ll have eighty or ninety more playing for the home team.”
“Works for me. C’mon, there’s still time to hunt before the ritual. I’m still hungry.”
Grinning like schoolkids, they closed the door and headed out to the campus grounds, where screams and shouts still filled the air.
It was at least five minutes before a voice said, “Everyone stay down.”
One of the slaughtered bodies moved, first raising his head, which moved quite well despite the gaping ruin that was his throat, then getting to his feet. He surveyed the room. There were eighty-seven bodies, but only fifty of them were dead. The others just looked it.
He moved quietly to the door, listened, opened it and looked out, then closed and locked it. “Okay,” he said crisply, “everyone up. We have to move fast.”
Thirty-seven murder victims stood up. All of them looked terrified, but in each of their faces was a spark of hope. The trick had worked. When the attack started the killings had been horrendous. The attackers swarmed in and there had been no warning, no challenge, no hesitation…just slaughter. Panic swept the room and the attackers used that, herding the people back toward the corners, cutting off their lines of escape, killing and moving to the next person packed into the corner.
Then one man—the one who now stood by the door—turned all that around. He grabbed a hot soldering iron from his work table and had leapt at one of the killers, swinging the burning needle over and down onto the back of the monster as he bent over a woman to drink from her throat. The creature screamed once and then went limp. When a second monster saw this and closed on him, the man ripped the soldering iron out of the dead creature’s skull and went straight for the newcomer’s eye socket.
Battles sometimes turn like that. A rout becomes a rally when one person takes a stand and shows how to kill the enemy that everyone else thought was impervious. Instead of a dozen terrorizing several dozen, the survivors became the attackers. One to one the creatures were too strong, but when five or six people tackled them, the physics of overwhelming mass and momentum kicked in. It wasn’t an easy win, and the fifty-nine that had started the counterattack had been stripped down to thirty-seven by the time the last killer went down. Thirty-seven plus the man with the soldering iron.
He tried to lead them outside, but the campus was a war zone. So, he herded his small army back inside and came up with a plan.
Tom Savini had made a career out of making people look dead, look like victims, look like monsters had been at them. He was here in Pine Deep to lecture on that very subject. He had everything to hand. There was enough real blood to reinforce the illusion, and though he had to cajole, browbeat, and, more than once, actually deck one of the survivors to keep them from losing their heads and to encourage cooperation, in the end they all followed his lead.
While Savini was painting wounds on a grad student, the young woman started to cry. “This is real…isn’t it?”
He paused and searched her eyes, then smiled. “I’ve been to ’Nam and I’ve spent my life in the movies. Nothing’s real.”
She gripped his wrist. “Thank you,” she said, her voice low and urgent.
Savini glanced at the door, then back to her. “Thank me when this is over.”
“You got it.”
5
Crow pounded his fist on the door. “Val…VAL!”
LaMastra and Tow-Truck Eddie had his back, both of them facing outward to check the hall. The light was bad and half of the emergency bulbs had been smashed. As Crow beat and kicked the door, LaMastra squinted and brought up his shotgun.
“Crow…we got company.”
“Crow! Is that you?” Her voice was muffled, but it was Val.
“Baby, it’s Vince and me. Open the door.”
There was noise and the squeal of something being dragged and then the door flew open. Val was there, completely drenched in blood, her face pale, her eyes dark.
For just a moment—for one terrible slice of time—Crow thought that she had been taken, that she had been consumed by the terror; but then she flew into his arms, and the warmth of her, the heat of her tears, the firm and full-blooded reality of her told him the truth. He pulled her close and kissed her bloody face and lips.
“I told you I’d come back for you, baby.”
“Oh, God, Crow…it’s been so awful.”
“We got company!” LaMastra said again and he broke their moment by firing into the shadows. Something screamed and fell back into the darkness.
Crow and Val brought up their guns and the others in the room tried to crowd into the doorway, which is when the big man standing to Crow’s left turned around and looked into the room and locked eyes with Mike Sweeney.
“No!” Mike cried and staggered back a step.
“The Beast!” hissed Eddie. “Crow, there he is! There’s the monster who has opened the gates of hell!”
Crow looked the wrong way first and saw nothing in the hallway, and then he turned and saw Eddie pointing his gun into the room, right at Mike. He saw the look on Eddie’s face and knew he was going to shoot, so he let go of Val and slammed Eddie’s arm against the doorjamb. The gun fired and the bullet missed Mike’s head by inches.
LaMastra grabbed Eddie by the collar and Crow shoved his chest and they hurled him out into the hallway. Eddie slipped on blood and went down hard, sliding five feet on his ass. LaMastra kicked the gun out of his hand and screwed the hot barrel of his Roadblocker into Eddie’s temple.
“Don’t fucking move,” LaMastra warned.
“Mike, what’s going on? Crow asked. “Val, somebody…what’s this shit?”
Mike pressed past Jonatha and Newton. “Crow…he’s the one that’s been chasing me on the road. He’s the one I told you about.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s sure,” Val said. “He told us all about it. Eddie even came into the store once.”
“He’s the Beast of the Apocalypse!” Eddie looked pleadingly at LaMastra. “He’s the one responsible for all of this. You have to let me—”
“Crow…?” LaMastra asked.
“Keep him there. Val, Mike, tell me what’s going on. Make it fast.”
They told him a very abbreviated version of what Mike had learned from the Bone Man. They both spoke loud enough for Eddie to hear. While they spoke Crow became aware of Mike’s eyes, and a chill rippled up his spine.
“Holy shit,” he said. He glanced at LaMastra. “Vince?”
“You call the play, man. I’m not emotionally invested in this bozo. Just say the word.”
Crow turned to Eddie and squatted down. “You heard what Val and Mike just said. You got fifteen seconds to give me a reason not to let Vince paint your brains all over the floor.”
“I am the Sword of God.” He said it as if it explained everything.
“And you think this kid is the Antichrist?”
“He is.”
LaMastra nudged him with the shotgun. “One twitch of the finger, Crow, and we’re done with this shit.”
Val came over and knelt down. “Eddie, I want you to listen to me. Mike is not the Antichrist or any other kind of evil. He’s an innocent boy who is as much a victim of all of this as we are. You’ve been lied to by Ubel Griswold, over and over again.”
“No! Satan is the Father of Lies and—”
Val slapped him across the face. “Listen to me, Eddie Oswald; if Mike Sweeney is evil, then you’re a dead man.” She straightened and turned to Mike. “Mike…kill him.”
Mike said, “What?”
“Go on, kill him. If you’re the goddamned Antichrist, then kill this fool, so we can get the hell out of here.”
Mike stood there, holding his shotgun loosely in his hands. “No, I—I mean, can’t we just tie him up or something?”
“Some Antichrist,” LaMastra muttered, mostly for Eddie’s benefit.
Mike came over and gently pushed Crow and Val aside. He knelt down in front of Eddie.
“Careful, kid,” said LaMastra, then to Eddie he said, “And you behave.”
Mike laid his shotgun down. “Mr. Oswald…when you were in the store the other day you came looking for me, didn’t you? You thought it was me, but then you came and met me and I could tell that you weren’t sure. Well, I have to tell you that I don’t give a rat’s ass if you live or die. I really don’t. You’ve been trying to kill me for a month now, and I didn’t do anything to you to deserve it. Everything in my life is shit. Everything. My mom’s a vampire and my dad…well, my dad is the kind of guy you should be going after. If you were really on some kind of holy mission to rid the world of evil, then you should be standing with us rather than against us.” He leaned closer. “I could kill you. They’d let me. They’d do it for me if I asked.”
