Had he seen Weller earlier in the day? “She could’ve arranged for it to happen.”
“What? She’d never do that. What are you saying?”
“You heard me,” Tom said. “I think there’s another player.”
93
“Another player?” Weller echoed. Tom nodded. “Has to be, unless it really was Mellie. But I’m thinking that it’s someone she knows and who could convince the kids he wasn’t a threat.”
“I . . .” Weller’s gaze danced to the snow as he drew a careful hand over his mouth. “I’m not seeing it, Tom. Why would she do that?”
Tom’s stomach went leaden. He knew Weller’s mannerisms and tells, and now he had to be careful. More compact, the arc of swing required to bring his Uzi to bear was much shorter than for Weller’s rifle. This was a contest he could win. But they weren’t there yet, and he had no wish to nudge them any closer to the brink. If this old man wanted Tom dead, he’d already had plenty of opportunities. “I guess that’s what I’m asking you,” he said.
For a long, tense moment, Weller only looked at him. He must’ve read something in Tom’s face he didn’t like, because the old man suddenly raised both hands in surrender. No way Weller would win in a draw down now. “Take it easy, Tom.”
“Two kids are missing, this horse and the dog are hamburger, and I should take it easy?” When Weller said nothing, he said, “Do you know what’s going on?”
“No,” the old man rasped, then sighed. “Not entirely, and not anything about this.”
“You want to tell me what you do know?” At Weller’s silence, he said, “Am I not supposed to make it back alive?”
The utter astonishment on Weller’s face was real. “What? Tom, that’s crazy.”
“According to Mellie, I’m the resident expert on crazy.” Now he felt a simmer of anger, the sneak of a finger on his trigger guard. Take it easy. Don’t make a move you can’t take back. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Weller snapped. “Whatever game Mellie’s playing, if she even is, I don’t have a clue. Now I’m putting my hands down.”
Sentimentality aside, he wasn’t stupid. Tom took another step back. “You could put the rifle down, too.”
“Not a chance in hell. I’d like to live to see tomorrow, thank you very much, and there is no way you’re taking my weapon. So either shoot me and go save those kids, or we get out of here now, together, because I do . . . not . . . like this, Tom. There is something going down, and we are in the wrong place to stop it.” When he didn’t move, Weller grated, “Jesus Christ on a crutch, Tom, I do not want you dead. I don’t want any more dead kids if I can help it. I will tell you what I know, but right now, all we got is each other, and we got to get to our kids. You’re going to have to trust me that far. You have my word on it, Tom, soldier to soldier.”
That, he believed. “All right,” Tom said, breaking his elbow, hoping it wasn’t the last thing he ever did. “But I’m not sure we should race back. We need to think this through because it might be that what’s going down is going down now. We still need to find Cindi and Chad.”
“I’m with you on all that.” Weller’s shoulders drooped with relief. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Mellie would hurt the kids, not intentionally anyway.”
“You don’t sound very certain.”
“Because I’m not,” Weller said. “So let’s go figure out what to do next.”
They were halfway to the horses, Tom a step or two behind Weller because, soldier to soldier notwithstanding, it paid to be careful. All of a sudden, Weller came to a dead stop and tipped a look at the sky. “Where the hell’s my head?”
Tom narrowly missed plowing into the older man’s back. “What?”
“We’re going to need to scout things out, work some sort of angle, right? Well, I don’t have my binos. Do you?”
“They’re back at camp. We can take Cindi’s. I’ll go back up—”
“No, you go on, get the horses. It’s further, and I’m a lazy cuss.” Cracking a grin, Weller was already trotting back up the steps. “Won’t be but a minute.”
It was when Tom was leading the horses back to the church that he realized what else it was that bothered him about that mess in the belfry.
An overturned stool. A dropped book. The tipped thermos. And garbage.
Cindi’s a neatnik. Whenever she visited him, she carefully refolded paper bags, waxed paper. Yet now there was trash, and not just anywhere, but—
You’re startled enough to drop a book and your binoculars. You kick over the stool. There’s chicken soup on the floor, and litter. His eyes widened. But that one mound of trash is piled on the binoculars, and that can’t be, not if she dropped—
“Weller!” Tom charged for the church. “Weller, no, NO!” Click-click-click. Click. Click. And now a sputter, like a snake.
Static. The hairs stood on Luke’s scalp. Mellie’s got a radio, and she’s talking to someone, in code.
Against every particle of good sense, he eased down the hall. The clicks sounded at erratic intervals. His pulse banged in his ears. This was dumb; what could he tell Tom? Well, there was this funky clicking? But if there was a radio and someone spoke—
From beneath his left boot came a loud, high squeal of a fatigued board: a real horror-show CREEEEE that made his brain freeze. A second later, he heard the telltale squall of bedsprings, and . . . “Hello?” The tone was sharp, the volume growing as Mellie moved for the bedroom door. “Who’s—”
Get out, get out! Whirling for the front door, he stumbled onto the porch at the same moment a door slammed drywall and Mellie shouted, “Who—”
Still running, he took the front steps in three leaping strides and plunged down the slope. What to do, what to do? Tom, Tom, where are you? Tom would know; Tom, he could trust. But Luke was on his own, and all he could think of was to run. He’d automatically headed toward the equipment shed, but now he thought, Wait, I’m safer around other people. He veered toward the cow barn and corral, steaming through the snow. Ahead, there were knots of kids, the bonfire. All the dogs had trotted halfway up the knoll past the far horse barn and were barking their communal yark-yark-yark. In the back of his mind, in that very last second before things fell apart for good, he thought, Wait, what’s got them all . . .
There was an immense explosion: not a boom but a ker-POW that was so violent, he felt the sound rebound and bounce and barrel its way around and over him. The blast echoed and caromed off the buildings. Gasping, his heart fluttering into his throat, he spun and looked north.
A pillar of smoke, a massive gray-black mushroom cloud, swelled and pillowed above the trees. Downslope, he could hear the other kids’ chatter suddenly cease. For a second, even the dogs fell silent, and he forget all about Mellie and her strange coded clicks.
Because the only thing out there worth blowing was the church. The church. Luke’s blood slushed. Cindi was on lookout, and Chad— and Weller had gone that way an hour ago; he’d taken off after . . . after . . .
“No.” It was a broken sound, hardly a word at all, and then he was stumbling into an awkward, spastic run, aware that Mellie was shouting after him. He heard the bang of a door, and saw Jasper, face chalk-white, stumbling out of the equipment shed. Other kids were rushing for and after him because he was the oldest and if he thought there was something out there worth seeing . . . “No, no. Cindi, Cindi! Tom!”
“What happened?” Jasper’s shout was a needle of sound. “What happened, what—”
All at once, the dogs started up again, but that steady yark-yarkyark was now a yammer: a frenzied, rapid-fire staccato, as clear as any alarm. The sound pierced the bright balloon of his panic—of Cindi Cindi Cindi TOM—and he skidded to a stop so quickly he almost tripped and fell to his knees. He turned, wondering what could possibly be more upsetting to the dogs than the bomb that had just destroyed the church and killed his friends.
From the east, still well beyond the staved-in barn, two horses bolted over the rise, scattering all the dogs but one, a blundering chocolate lab that just wasn’t quick enough. There was a high shriek as one horse plowed it under and then a second, longer scream as the horse’s legs tangled. Crashing to its knees, the horse turned a complete flip. Screaming, the boy—Luke thought from the cap of sandy hair that it might be a twelve-year-old named Colin—blasted over the horse’s head. The boy landed in a heap beyond his horse, which had already struggled up. Veering a sharp cut to the left, the other rider and horse only just missed the boy as they continued in their headlong crash down the hill.
What the hell? Colin was still on the snow, trying to wallow to his feet, but his horse was losing its head, panicking, rearing and plunging down. “Colin, get up! Look out!” Luke screamed as the boy only raised an arm. “Get up, run, ruh—”
The horse stabbed down, and Colin’s yell abruptly cut out.
No. Luke clapped both hands to his mouth to hold back the scream. Both Colin and the dog were ruby splotches, like what was left after you swatted bloated mosquitoes. He scrambled to higher ground, not much caring anymore if Mellie snagged him or not, wallowing uphill until he had a good view to the east, the way the lookouts had come, wondering what in hell had scared them.
And then he saw them, in the distance.
Monsters, heading their way.
“Get in the barn!” Spinning on his heels, Luke waved the kids back. “Get in the barn! Jasper, everybody, get in the barn, barricade the doors, go, go!”
He saw Jasper suddenly whirl in an about-face and streak for the corral. Other children, who’d been surging for him, abruptly changed course, only to pile into those just behind. The air prickled with panicky screams, and Luke could hear the horses in their stalls braying in alarm. Kids shot right and left, like a rack of billiard balls on the first break. Some—the littlest ones—fell, and Luke watched, horrified, as two other kids stampeded over a fallen boy until a third scooped the kid up on the fly. Some headed for the barn, while a ragged cluster scurried north, streaming past the equipment shed and on down the road toward the trees. This wasn’t a bad idea, but the forest was a good quarter mile distant and the kids would be caught out in the open, with no protection at all.