The Devil's Touch (30 page)

"It could well be a trick," Sam cautioned the others. "Janet pulled the same thing up in Canada, at Falcon House. Nydia and I thought she was being brutally raped. But it was all just a show for our ears."

Monty curtly nodded his head in the direction of the howling. "But what if that is not an act? What if that is the real thing?"

"Then she is having a bad time of it," Sam said, a coldness to his words. "What would you suggest we do?"

Monty's shoulders slumped. "1—don't know, Sam. But I can't take much more of that poor girl's screaming. It's getting to me."

"It's getting to us all, Monty. But we can't afford to do anything rash or foolish. We can't afford to lose anybody. There are too few of us compared to many of them. And it's going to get worse; much worse. Believe it."

Monty turned away and walked into the center of the mansion without replying. His back was stiff with pent-up anger and frustration.

Sam knew exactly how the man felt.

"What is being done to that poor girl?" Father Le Moyne asked.

Despite himself, Sam was growing weary of the constant barrage of questions. He held his temper in check and said, "Probably being raped and sodomized, Father."

Sam walked away, leaving the priest alone with his prayers. The screaming was getting to Sam, as well.

First light found the small group of Christians haggard and mentally worn. The screaming, howling, and painful shrieking and the dirty laughter and shouts of obscenities had picked up during the night and continued without abatement until the first faint touches of light filtered past the dark.

Telling the others to stay inside, Sam went outside for a look-around.

The day was cloudy, with low-hanging clouds, gray and black, threatening to spill rain at any moment.

A short scream of fright stopped Sam. "Oh, my God!" he heard Barbara say. "Look over there! It's horrible!"

Sam turned, the AK on full auto, off safety. The body of a naked man hung by a rope over the stone fence to the west of the mansion. The noose was around his neck, his face horribly swollen, blackened tongue sticking out of his mouth. He had been tossed over the fence sometime during the night and slowly strangled.

"Monty!" Sam called. "Come on. I need your help. The rest of you stay in the house." He looked up at the second level of the mansion. Joe stood watching him from a window. "Give me some eyes on the west side, Joe," he called. "Just in case."

"Gotcha," Joe returned the call. He disappeared from view.

Sam walked toward the dead man. He recognized him as the minister of a small church in Logandale. He could not recall the man's name or the church. The man had been hideously tortured. Strange markings covered his naked body, cut deeply into once living flesh. Blood streaked down his inner thighs from the horrible wounds where his testicles and penis had been hacked off.

Monty reached Sam's side. He wore a sidearm and carried a Remington Model Six, .308 caliber. "Dan Abbott," Monty said. "Pastored that little Baptist church over on Davidson Street. 1 didn't know him very well. Seemed like a decent man, though."

"Married?"

"Yeah. Two or three kids. Three, I think. Yeah, that's right. Two girls and one boy. Girls are about thirteen and fourteen. The boy is in grade school. Wife's name is—ah—Nancy."

The men cut the rope and lowered the body to the ground. "I'll get something to wrap him in," Monty said. "A tarp." He looked at Sam. "Next thing is what are we going to do with him?"

"I don't know. Burn him, I guess."

"Jesus Christ, Sam!"

Sam met the man's eyes. "You want to start digging holes, then?"

Monty didn't.

"Ya'll got company on the other side of the fence," Joe called. "Two men and two young girls. Look like teenagers. I think it's the Abbott girls."

"Perhaps we have found, or they have found us, some more Christians," Monty said hopefully.

"Don't count on it." Sam dashed the hopes.

The voice of one of the girls confirmed it. She called from the other side of the tall fence. "What are you people gonna do with the old fucker?"

"What is he to you?" Sam called.

"He was our daddy," the girl replied matter-of-factly. "We tried to give him some pussy. Our pussy. But he didn't want none of it. Hell with him."

"Dear God in Heaven," Monty whispered.

"Get away from this house," Sam warned them.

"Oh, fuck you, Balon," one of the men with the girls called. "You ain't gonna do nothing except run that goddamn Christian mouth of yours."

"I wish I had a grenade," Sam muttered.

"You'd kill the children, too," Monty told him. "My God, Sam. What do you have running in your veins, ice water?"

"Those 'kids,' as you call them, are dead already, Monty," Sam whispered. "Man—you have to accept that. Don't hesitate to shoot when the time comes. I mean it. Let me show you, Monty." He raised his voice. "Who cut off your father's testicles and penis?"

"You mean his cock and balls?" a girl asked.

"Yes."

"Me and mother. We tried to get him to fuck a boy up the ass but he wouldn't do it. So we cut them off. You should have heard him holler when we done it."

"Was the boy his son?"

"Yeah. We give him to some guys. They fucked him all night. I think he's dead, or something."

Sam cut his eyes to Monty. "Now you see what I'm talking about?"

Horror leaped into the man's eyes. "Their own father? Their own
brother!"

"Their father is Satan," Sam told him. "I don't know what else has to happen to convince you of that fact. But you'd damn well better get your act together. Because if you don't, you're going to die and take a lot of us with you in the process."

Sam hooked one toe of his boot into a crack in the stone fence and heaved himself up. He burned half a clip into the group standing on the other side. He dropped back to face a horrified Monty Draper.

"You killed those people—those kids! You shot them in cold blood."

"If he hadn't of done it," Joe called from the second floor, "I damn sure was goin' to."

Sam was rapidly getting irritated at Monty. "Like I said, Monty. Get your shit together. And do it quickly."

"Things roamin' around on the other side of the fence," Joe radioed from the second floor. "They ain't them Beasts, but they ain't really human neither, I don't think. I don't know what the hell they are, tell the truth. Look to me like they're all tore up."

"What are they doing?" Sam radioed back.

"Nothin'. Just standin' by the gate lookin' in. Man and a woman, I think. But it's hard to tell. They look familiar to me—kind of."

Sam cut his eyes to Father Le Moyne. The priest stood up. "1 know," he said. "I felt their presence. Now I have to face them."

"What are you two talking about?" Barbara asked. The woman looked as if she was about to come unhinged.

"Daniel's brother and sister-in-law," John told her. "They've become part of the walking dead. They're here, looking for Daniel."

"Oh,
come on,
John!" his wife blurted. "Now this is getting totally out of hand. This is a nightmare. I'm asleep. None of this is real."

"Barbara—" John opened his mouth.

"No!" she screamed at the roomful of people. "I just, by God, will not take any more of this. I can't. I want out of here, John."

Before anyone could respond, a mocking male voice was heard, speaking through a bullhorn. "Oh, Barbara. Barbara, honey, come on out and play with us, Barbara. You remember me, don't you, Barbara?" He laughed, an ugly, evil ring to the savage bark of dark humor. The voice came from the east side of the grounds.

John Morton sighed and would not meet the eyes of those in the room.

"Cut the lights," Sam told Mille.

She plunged the room into darkness.

"Come on out, Barbara," the voice called. "1 got something long and thick and hard for you. Come on, baby. Don't you remember how you used to love to lick on it?"

John rose from his chair and walked out of the room, a stiffness to his back. He left the room as if that act alone would prevent him from hearing the vulgarities coming from beyond the fence.

Barbara sat with tears running down her face. She sobbed quietly.

"Come on, honey!" the voice boomed through the night. "This is ol' Duke. Don't you remember how you used to love to get on top and sit on it? You said it felt good going in that way. Sure you remember. Come on out and play, Barbara. We'll be waiting."

Viv went to the sobbing woman. She pulled her from the chair and took her by the arm, leading her from the darkened room and into another room just off the hallway.

The bullhorn fell silent. Joe said, "1 feel sorry for both them people. It ain't John's fault the way the Good Lord made him, and it ain't really her fault the way she is. Some folks just can't help the way they are." He walked toward the archway leading out of the room. "I got me a rifle upstairs. I think I'll go see if I can't get that Duke Edwards in gunsights. If I do, 1 guarantee you, he's gonna be one dead son-of-a-bitch."

"Good luck," Monty said grimly, his comment surprising Sam.

Sam glanced at Father Le Moyne standing quietly in the heavy darkness. "You know what we have to do, Father. Are you ready?"

"Yes. Did you get the articles I asked for?"

"I got them," Sam replied. "They're in the hall. One for you and one for me."

"You're a brave young man, Sam."

Sam didn't respond to the compliment. He was as scared as the next person; but he knew fear was contagious, and he could not let his personal fear show. "Come on, Father. Let's do it. Noah? Even though a bullet won't stop them, enough lead will knock them down in case we run into—"

"Sam!" Joe yelled from upstairs. "Them folks that was by the gate—they're gone. I think I seen them walkin' on the grounds."

They all heard the back door open and close. The smell of the grave permeated the house.

"I sure would like to dip my wick in that Balon woman's snatch," Sheriff Pat Jenkins said to Vernon. "Sexy bitch." They stood a safe distance from the mansion, both of them looking at the hugeness of Fox Estate in the night. "Then I'd stem Monty's wife."

"Fine-looking cunts," Vernon agreed. "But Mille's the one I want."

"Miller Jenkins laughed. "Hell, Vern. She's been spreading that pussy around town since she was twelve/thirteen years old."

"It ain't wore out," the deputy replied. "Other than a woman's mouth, the pussy's the most durable part of her body. Besides, there's only two kinds: big ol' good ones and good ol' big ones."

The crowd of unshaven and unwashed men laughed at the old joke. The stench of them was foul. Dan Evans said, "And you ain't never had no bad, huh, Vern?"

"Nope. Just some that was better than others," Vernon said. He looked at Jenkins. "Why don't we rush them, Pat? Just rush them and take them out of that mansion?"

"The Master says no. The Princess says no. We have to obey. The Master is going to win this time, and he knows it. He wants to play with them for a time."

Vernon nodded his head in understanding. He looked around him. "Anybody here wanna come home with me and fuck my old lady?"

A huge fat man stepped up, an equally fat man with him. "Me and Jesse'll take a whack at her, Vern."

Vernon looked at the pair, an amused look in his eyes. "Yeah. One in front and one in back. That ought to be a sight to see. Wanna come see the show, Pat?"

"Bet she'll holler," the sheriff said with a smile. "Yeah, let's go."

The grounds of Nelson College lay dark and quiet in the purple of Satan's night. A light mist clung to the land, undisturbed by even a whisper of wind. Inside the dark structures, however, it was quite a different story. Low moanings could be heard from nearly every room; weeping and crying out for mercy came from the basements; the begging and pleading for God to put an end to this suffering and degradation whispered and echoed around the deserted halls and corridors of the buildings. The slap of flesh against flesh, the gruntings as male hardness hunched in and out of female softness played a rhythmic tune without melody or meter as dozens of rapes continued into the night.

In the basement of the administration building, a bloody and naked young man clung to life and love of God. Life was rapidly leaving him; but love of God had not. He refused to renounce his God.

Another young man, his clothing blood-splattered, stood over the naked young man, a stained knife in one hand. He turned to a group of men and women. His smile was macabre.

"Are you ready to take the pledge to forever serve the Master?" he asked the crowd of young people.

"Yes." The reply came as one voice. All eyes were on the hideously tortured young man tied to a table. To a person they had enjoyed the horrible cries from the torture. Yes. They were ready to take the pledge of submission.

Professor Edie Cash began intoning the chant that would forever seal the fate of all who repeated the damning words.

And all present repeated the chant of the damned.

Screaming filled the basement as the knife-wielding young man began cutting into living flesh. He removed the still beating heart and held it in his hands, blood leaking from life's muscle, dripping onto the floor.

"Now you are and always will be one with us," Edie told the group. "For you, there will be no turning back. Now, go! Seek out and find all nonbelievers in the word of the Dark One. Bring them to us.
Go!"

The room quickly emptied.

Edie looked at what was left of the young man on the bloody table. "Stupid fool," she said. "He could have had eternal life with us." She lifted her eyes to the young man standing with the knife and heart in his hands. "Have him taken to the Beasts."

"Yes, mistress."

Sam and Father Le Moyne ran from the room and jerked up the sharpened stakes leaning against the wall in the hall. Sam paused for a moment at the door.

"Lock all the doors to this room and don't let anybody you don't know inside. No matter what they might say. And be sure it's who you think it is. Father Le Moyne, Noah—let's do it."