Unearthed (52 page)

“Focus,” Duncan said.

“On what?” Hendricks snapped. “Some big ugly that we haven’t even seen yet?” He looked ahead and saw Arch and Alison’s little car flying along in front of them. They passed the city limits sign, then left it behind in a flash. “No, thanks. I want to go into battle cool, not riled and shitting myself with anger.”

“You might want to calm down a little, then,” Darlington said from the backseat.

Hendricks glanced at Duncan. If he’d been human, his hands would have been white-knuckling the damned wheel. As it was, the wheel’s leather was cracking in his grasp, but the shade of his fingers looked the same under the flash of the lights they were passing every few seconds. “You gonna be all right? Feeling a little nervous?”

“If you knew what we were heading into, you’d be nervous, too,” Duncan said. His lips were a tight line, and his eyes were fixed on the road ahead as they ran at eighty miles an hour into town, the sky ahead of them aglow with unnatural fire.

Reeve had driven a couple more blocks, Erin as his passenger, catching another glimpse of the thing as it was making its way through a space between two yards. He’d gotten a good look at it under a street light, maybe even better than with his own headlights before, and he wasn’t that eager to confront the thing. There was dumb, there was stupid, and then there was this. Still, he needed to put this thing down, and he was planning to stage the confrontation in such a way that he could control the outcome as best he could. He figured choice shots to the heart would be the key, and to that end, he was suddenly real glad he hadn’t just stuffed the department’s AR-15 into the evidence locker after they’d retrieved it from Arch’s car, clearly plentifully used.

“Any luck getting hold of Fries?” he asked as he pulled the Explorer to a stop.

“No service,” Erin said, slipping her phone back onto her belt. “I think this thing might have taken out the tower.”

“You say it’s a demon?” Reeve asked, slipping out of his door as Erin did the same on the other side.

“Yep,” Erin said. “Straight outta hell. There’s a plague of them here. It’s what’s been ailing us.”

Reeve felt a surge of fury and pushed it down. “You and me are going to have a long conversation later that you’re not going to enjoy.”

“Looking forward to it,” Erin said, “if we live.”

“How are you with the AR?” Reeve asked, opening the back of the Explorer.

“Pretty good—” Erin started.

“Excuse me, officer?” A woman stood behind them, shadowed in the headlights of a car Reeve hadn’t even seen pull up.

“Ma’am, you’re going to want to clear this area,” Reeve said, turning around to face her. “This place is a disaster area.”

“I know,” she said, walking toward him slowly, “it’s just so scary.” There was something about the way she said it that caused Reeve’s scalp to tingle. His hand drifted toward his gun. “Explosions, and screaming, and pain …”

“Ma’am, I need you to step back,” Reeve said, suddenly very aware that the way the car was parked, the way she was approaching them, it was perfectly set up so that he was near blinded by the headlamps of the car.

She didn’t stop, though. “I mean … I’m just visiting this town, and I … I can’t ever remember seeing anything like this before. It’s horrible, just horrible.” She didn’t make it sound like it was horrible.

She sounded like she was almost enjoying herself.

“Boss—” Erin said, and then something yanked her out of sight.

“Sonofa—” Reeve drew, but his head was turned toward Erin. It was dark, his eyes were half-blinded by the headlights, but he could see an arm wrapped around her neck. When he turned back, the woman was right there—

She lashed out with a hand and Reeve felt a tightness on his throat. He fired, twice, into her body, but her grip did not slacken at all. It seemed to get tighter as she drew him in, until he could finally see a wretched smile on her face. “You shot me,” she said. “I came to you for help and you
shot me
. Do you know what I’m going to do to you for that? Do you have any idea who I am …?”

A shot like thunder bellowed out in the night, shattering the headlight of the car behind the woman and striking down a man who’d been just standing there, a man Reeve hadn’t even seen. He hit the ground as his leg spun off, his body rolling from some enormous impact.

The woman who had him by the throat growled. It was feral, it was nasty, and it reminded Reeve of the time he’d hunted a bobcat in Georgia and accidentally got a little too close to his prey, nearly reversing roles with the thing. “What—”

“I know who you are!” Archibald Fucking Stan called out, stepping out from behind the Explorer. “You’re the queen of the damned, the duchess of hell, a pain in the backside and one merciless lady.” Reeve wanted to be pissed, but … it was a pretty good entrance, he had to admit. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, Katlin Elizabeth, but … I try not to lie.”

“I remember who you are, too, Arch Stan,” Katlin Elizabeth said. “And I think it’s time for us to be introduced on a much more intimate basis, your tongue to my—”

That bellowing roar rang out again, and this time Reeve recognized it. It was that same damned noise he’d heard on the night of the Summer Lights Festival, the sound of hell rolling on high, the sound of thunder out of the hills, the sound …

Of a big-ass Barrett Rifle that he’d last seen when he’d checked it into evidence last night.

Katlin Elizabeth ripped free of his throat like she’d gotten kicked by a mule right out of a movie still-frame. She hit the ground and rolled shoulders to face and landed flat on her belly ten feet away, hurled like she was a stuffed animal thrown by a pissed-off grown up.

Reeve stood there, separated from that bitch’s arm, rubbing his throat with one hand and clutching his gun with the other.

“Don’t talk to my husband like that,” Alison Stan said, emerging from the darkness behind him, cradling that rifle like it was a damned baby.

Six gunshots came in rapid succession from his left, and Reeve pulled his gun up as he realized he’d forgotten about Erin and her attacker. Apparently, her attacker had forgotten about her, too, because Erin was shooting his ass over and over with her Glock at close range, and the man fell down, bleeding from his mouth, his chest and his jaw. He slumped to the ground, ass slightly up in the air, and Reeve realized for the first time he was wearing goddamned coattails, like an old-fashioned tuxedo.

“I should be awfully cross with you, Arch,” Reeve said, turning to look back at his former deputy.

“But you’re not?” Arch asked, his wife just a pace behind him.

“Ain’t got time for that right now,” Reeve said, lowering his pistol. “Apparently, there are demons afoot. One really big, ugly sucker that’s running through my town like a laxative through—”

There was a shattering noise and Reeve spun his head to look again. The demon had crossed within fifty feet of them and was tearing through a new block now, ripping right through—damn, that was the Schultz house. The bastard thing had gone right through the picture window and wall in the living room, leaving a crater of a hole behind. “We need to get proactive about this.” He looked at Arch. “Plenty of time for recrimination—and to discuss stealing evidence,” he looked pointedly at Alison, “later.”

“We got another team moving up to engage from the front,” Arch said. There was a squeal of tires and Reeve caught sight of an old pickup moving past at the end of the street. Was that Bill Longholt’s truck? He thought it might be. “Maybe two,” Arch added.

“You’re the old hand at this, apparently,” Reeve said, sighing, feeling like the whole goddamned world had just been turned right the fuck upside down. “What do we do?”

“You fucking die,” came the hissing voice of Katlin Elizabeth, back on her feet. He saw her face for the first time, really, as she came at him. Red eyes, veins parading across her forehead and cheeks in all directions, and teeth that looked like they were filed to points. Her tongue swung between her lips as she came straight at him, and Reeve had only a moment to register that, goddamn, that woman really
did
look like a demon before she was upon them.

Lauren stepped out of the car not really sure what to do. Duncan and Hendricks were off and moving in a flash, running toward the chaos and action and rumbling of the Rog’tausch, tearing its way through houses, but she was hesitating. It could have been the sleep deprivation, sure, or it could have been the heady rush of sanity as she watched it shatter a heavy plastic shed into nothing but splinters as it punched its way through. That sort of shit would get a body killed, she knew, and she couldn’t even really see the shards of rubberized plastic because it was so dark and everything was happening so fucking fast.

“Get up close and personal with it?” Hendricks asked as he ran down the street. Lauren got over her hesitation and started running, glad she’d picked sensible shoes when she’d gone on the stakeout with Belzer last night. Hendricks sounded a little hesitant, too, like he was seeking out guidance. Maybe after being good and burned last time, he’d be twice shy this round. Worked for Lauren. She figured, based on what she’d seen coming into town, that she was probably going to have a shit-ton of patients to deal with without adding any more to the waiting list.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Duncan asked. “That thing will shatter every bone in your body, including your empty skull, and it’ll take more than Spellman’s Red Bull to bring you out of that one.”

“More like Blue Bull,” Hendricks said. “We need to do something to slow it down.”

“Slow it down?” Duncan asked. “I think we want to speed it up, get it through and out of town if possible.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Hendricks asked, craning his neck to look at the possible path the thing was taking. “How far do you think it is to the edge of Midian?”

“A mile,” Lauren said, “probably less. But it’s a pretty populous mile. You think it’s going to just leave?”

“I think it’s on course for something,” Duncan said, running without sounding out of breath—unlike her and Hendricks. “I think anything in the way gets the hammer treatment.”

“Too bad it’s not the MC Hammer treatment,” Lauren said, trying to find any light she could. When Duncan looked back at her, she shrugged while running. “‘Can’t Touch This.’ Ever heard of that song?”

“He’s giving this town the MC Escher treatment,” Duncan said, not bothering to acknowledge her flimsy witticism. “As in, it’s going to be one fucked-up perspective etching.”

“That was a reach,” Hendricks said. “Anyway, I don’t see how we can speed him up.” They were only about thirty feet off from the likely crossing point, Lauren figured. “But if we’re not going to fight him, we should at least start clearing the houses in his path. That would seem to be the courteous thing.” He shook for a second. “I don’t see how I’m going to let it keep coming without trying to pick a fight, though. I can’t just let something like that pass, not while it’s fucking up the town like this.”

“Give it a go,” Duncan said, “you’ll be a nice smear on the pavement.”

“You don’t know that,” Hendricks said.

“This thing is ten times the threat of Katlin Elizabeth,” Duncan said. “Not to mash your tiny baby emotions, but she fucking broke your will and ground you down. This thing will break your body and leave your brain splattered on the side of the road.” Duncan threw up a hand. “Do you see what it’s doing? I’ll admit you’re bullheaded, but you’ve got to be out of your fucking mind to think your skull is stronger than a brick wall, and it’s just ripping right through those like they’re paper.” He came to a stop. “I’ll fight the damned thing if you’ll start evacuating houses.”

“What should I do?” Lauren asked. She felt her innards shake, just a little, but she kept it inside.

“Do no harm,” Hendricks said, “and try not to get any visited upon you.” He paused. “Your family live anywhere near here?”

Lauren shook her head. That much was a relief anyway. “My mom’s house is on that side of town.” She pointed west, far from this insane chaos.

“At least there’s that,” Hendricks said and focused on Duncan. “I’m knocking on doors.” He started to trot off to the other side of the street. The rumbling was getting closer. “Doc, you stand back until it passes and start heading back along its path. Duncan …”

“Yeah, yeah,” Duncan said, strangely still. “Up close and personal. But don’t expect me to stand still on this one. My only chance is to not get hit. Ever.”

“Then I suggest you float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” Hendricks said, already halfway up a lawn.

“Something’s gonna sting, all right,” Duncan said. “Better move back, Doctor.”

Lauren stared at him for a moment. “Are you going to be okay?”

The sound of something being broken, hard, explosively, echoed into the night, followed by the roar of a big gun. “I doubt it,” Duncan said, a little tension creeping into his voice. “But there’s not going to be a hell of a lot you can do for me either way, so focus on the human element, will you?”

“I’ll—” She didn’t get to finish her sentence before the house behind her exploded in a blast of fire that knocked her right to the ground.

Brian saw the second house go up in a blaze of goddamned glory, and his comment about fucking disaster movie porn shot to the front of his mind. “This is the sort of shit Devlin and Emmerich have wet dreams about,” he muttered as his father steered to the end of the street. They’d passed the cops and flashing lights a couple streets ago, but kept going.

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” his father said, throwing the car into park and getting out, raising a little alarm in Brian’s head.

“Whoa, where are you—?” Brian spun his head around, looking out the back window to see his father using the rear tire to step up into the bed. He threw aside the tarp that Brian had hidden under only last night—God, it was like a million years ago already—and opened up his gun case, drawing out his rifle and sitting down with his back against the wheel well.

Brian watched wordlessly as his father put the magazine into the rifle and racked a round into the chamber. It was a smooth weapon, military-like, but Brian didn’t have a fucking clue what kind it was. It looked like a sleeker version of something old. His father sat with his legs spread, using his knee as a balance, looking down the scope to the street.