Darkly The Thunder (11 page)

“It isn't paradise, Sunny. But it isn't too bad. Yes, I can read your thoughts. Where we are is indescribable – to you. There is no way either of us could make you understand.”

“All right. I won't pursue it. Sand.”

“Yes. We must hurry. The Fury is gaining strength.”

“The Fury?”

“The evil you face.”

“What it is?”

“It's an entity. A being, if you like, that has existed since the beginnings of time. Our time, your time – Earth. It was not created by God. It was just there. There are some things that even we don't understand . . . where we are.”

“Are there other inhabited worlds?”

“Thousands.”

“All created by God?”

“Yes. This is not a safe subject, Sunny. Not for you.”

She didn't understand that, but she accepted what he said. She was stepping lightly around dangerous territory, and did not want to misstep. “Are you both with Sand?”

“By choice. We don't have to be there.”

“That's a lot of loyalty.”

“Sand is a lot of man.”

“Still?”

“Even more so. He's been fighting the Fury for years.”

“How do we begin?”

“Close your eyes.”

Thunder cracked.

“Al?” the governor pleaded. “How in the hell can I clear the guy's name? Jesus, man, he killed at least half a dozen people.”

“Nevertheless, I think you'd better find a way. He's helping us, so to speak, and we owe him that much. We believe, that if it wasn't for him, you'd have seven thousand dead bodies on your hands right now.”

“The entire town?”

“Yes.”

“Colonel, I know you don't like me. You made that crystal clear during the campaign. But level with me: what is your assessment of the situation?”

“Lousy. But we have a person who is interviewing a couple of people who know Sand – ”

“Who
knew
Sand,” the governor corrected.

“No, Governor. I mean, who
know
Sand. They've been dead about ten years.”

There was a long pause from the governor's end of the line. Siatos cleared his throat. “Ah, Al, you want to run that by me again?”

“Trust me on this, Governor. We might not know, yet, what we're facing, but we know an ally. And believe me, we need all the help we can get. Especially if they come from the other side.”

“The other side of what?”

“The grave.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” His sigh was audible. “What else can I do from here, Al?”

“You and the attorney general” – that liberal son of a bitch, Watts thought – “are old friends, aren't you?”

“Sure. We go way back.”

Not far enough, Watts wanted to say. “Get him working, very quietly and very swiftly – like right now. I will have sent to you, by personal courier, my jacket on Sand – ”

“What's your coat got to do with this?”

Watts sighed heavily. He suppressed an urge to tell the governor that anybody as stupid as Siatos appeared to be, should be institutionalized for the public good. He calmed himself. “His file, Governor. I have the complete file here with me.”

“Oh. Right. Ah, how are you going to send it out by courier? You can't get out.”

Watts took several deep breaths. “Well, governor, I'll probably use an officer from the state patrol, since we seem to be surrounded by them.”

“Oh! Good thinking, Al.”

“Thank you. Governor, find some way to exonerate Sand. New evidence – anything. Make something up, if you have to. Those punks he killed deserved what they got. And go public with the news, all right?”

Watts hung up the phone and walked over to Gordie's side. He pointed to the phone. “Gordie, are you aware of the fact that the man I just spoke with is so stupid, he'd have to use a compass to find his way off a merry-go-round?”

“Yes. But right now, he's the only thing we have working for us on the outside.”

“God help us all.”

The college kids walked into the office. They all looked rested, but still a little confused.

“Sheriff,” Hillary said. “We'd all like to go home now.”

“I'm sorry, Miss. But no one is allowed to leave.”

“But you can't keep us here against our will,” Leon said. “That's unconstitutional.”

Watts sat down, muttering under his breath about the nation being constitutionalized into anarchy.

“People,” Gordie faced the group of college kids. “I tried to tell you yesterday. Perhaps you were all too exhausted and scared to fully comprehend. That . . . thing out there,” he waved his hand, “up there, wherever the hell it is, won't let anyone leave – ”

I'LL LET DOYLE LEAVE, IF HE'LL GIVE THE OLD COPPER A BLOW JOB.

Doyle looked wildly around him.

Watts looked disgusted.

“No way!” Doyle yelled.

YOUR OPTION, POOPSIE.

The voice started singing “Love Me Tender” and gradually faded away.

“Everything is from the nineteen-fifties,” a voice spoke from the doorway.

Howie and Angel stood there, scared looks on their faces, their clothing blood-splattered.

“Are you two all right?” Gordie asked, walking to them.

“We're all right,” Angel told him. “Some kids threw the blood on us. They killed some poor little dog.” She started crying.

Gordie waved for his secretary to get Angel, motioned for Mack to take Howie. “Get them cleaned up. Tell one of the trustees to wash and dry their clothing.”

Watts walked over and whispered to Gordie: “Howie had a point about the fifties.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gordie returned the whisper. “I put that together yesterday. We'll talk about it.”

A car slid to a stop outside the building, and a woman came rushing into the office, a shotgun in her hands. She pointed it at Deputy Ralph Minor and blew his head off.

Sunny opened her eyes. She was still in the chair, still looking at Richard. There was a worried look on his face.

“I can't get you through,” he told her. “The Fury is too strong. It's growing on the evil, feeding on the evil in this town. Feeding and storing.”

“Like a reactor?”

“Sort of. It stores evil. It usually feeds on the souls of the departed, just at or just after the moment of death, as the soul travels between worlds. It's like electricity.”

“Then what some scientists claim is true, about the human body and the brain, especially?”

“Yes. To a degree. But that is not important now. I can't get you through to witness.”

“Can't you just tell me?”

“Not enough of it. Some you will have to see through your own eyes. It's important, imperative, that you personally feel, to some degree, the pain and mental anguish. That's the only way you could possibly comprehend the grief and mental state of the accused and wrongly judged in this matter. That way you might be able to write the truth, and possibly alter the way our – your – judicial system works.”

Sunny had to smile. Even in death, Sand was still fighting the system. “Now what do we do?”

“I don't know. I've got to get some instructions. No one thought the Fury would grow this strong this soon.”

Sunny got up to leave.

“Sunny? Don't go back out there. I can give you some protection here, nothing out there.”

“I have to leave. The Fury wants its story told as well.”

“I . . . see. That's odd.”

“Why?”

“It wants to strike in a blaze of glory,” Richard said softly. “That has to be it.” Sunny had to strain to hear him. “It's never attacked a town of this size before – not in any civilized industrial nation – not and made its true self known.”

“Tell me this: why hasn't this thing, the Fury, been reported before now? Mass killings are big news.”

“Because it can disguise itself as anything. It can bring down planes, cause typhoons and earthquakes, stormy seas to sink ships. The Fury loves wars. It encourages them. More grist for the mill, so to speak. But it hasn't struck at home for more than a hundred years.”

“What do you mean?”

“The old mining town of Thunder. The Fury hit there a hundred years ago.”

“What about this blaze of glory you mentioned?”

“I'm not sure. I'd guess the Fury plans something much larger in scale. Bear in mind that it has a monumental ego.”

“It's fooled us all for years, Richard,” Linda said. “It led us to believe we were containing it. Anyway Sand thought he was. And maybe he was, to a degree. But all the time it was planning something much larger; evil on a scale the world has never seen.”

“I think you're right,” her husband agreed.

“What evil could it do that would encompass the world?” Sunny asked.

Richard looked at her. “You couldn't possibly comprehend the Fury, Sunny. It's a huge mass of energy. All of it evil. It's had eons to grow. Its size is enormous. Gargantuan.”

“What does it want?” Sunny wanted to scream the words.

“And there isn't anything that could stop it, with the exception of God,” Richard muttered. “Every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth could kneel and pray – that wouldn't stop it.”

“Then God will stop it,” Sunny said firmly.

Richard's smile was sad. “You don't understand, Sunny. The Fury is evil. Pure evil. That's how it's grown so huge; by feeding on the earth's evil. Feeding on all the bad deeds and wicked thoughts and humans' lack of compassion for each other and for God's creatures.”

Sunny began to comprehend. She felt weak and sick and dirty and scared and guilty. And she was just one human out of several billion on earth. She thought of that poor, scared, and wet puppy she had found on her back steps one time. She had shooed it away rather than take it in. A few days later, she found the little puppy dead, after a car had struck it. One of God's creatures that she had a hand in killing.

She thought of all the starving people around the world, and then thought of her closets packed with clothes and shoes . . . much of which she never wore. She just bought.

She thought of the homeless and the abused and the mentally ill. She thought of all the mean little cuts and slights she had uttered and, yes, written over the years, knowing that her words would scar.

“And you are just one really very decent person,” Richard said, reading her thoughts.

He was misty through the tears in her eyes. “Are you telling me that God would not save us?”

“Why should He? Perhaps He is weary of the whole miserable business here on earth. He has much nicer and gentler worlds in His domain; worlds where humankind and animals live in peace and harmony. Read His word, Sunny. He gave it to you. Read Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verse 19: ‘For that which befall men also shall befall beasts; even one thing befall them: as the one dies, so dies the other; they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'

“He warned us, Sunny. He told us that He is a vengeful God. He gave us the Commandments and told us to follow them. Why should Willowdale fare any better than Sodom and Gomorrah, or the state or the world, for that matter?”

“Then He'll just let the earth be destroyed?”

“No. He'll just let it be turned into part of hell and turn His attentions to another world, where people are more prone to follow his teachings and the teachings of His son.”

“But I can't change the world, Richard!” she cried.

“You can try.”

 

 

Gordie, Watts, and two deputies fired at the shotgun-toting woman. Their slugs staggered her, knocking her back, but did not put her down. With blood pouring from her wounds, the woman lifted the autoloading shotgun and fired again, the buckshot striking a jail trustee in the chest and slapping him against a wall. He died on his feet, a very startled look on his face.

Watts leveled his .357 in a two-handed grip, and put one hollow-nosed round between the woman's eyes. She dropped the shotgun from dead hands. As it hit the floor, the shotgun fired, the buckshot blowing a hole in the side of the desk housing the dispatch equipment. Old Mack, showing surprising agility for a man his age, jumped flat-footed over one side and hit the floor on the other side, belly down.

“Secure the outside,” Gordie yelled.

Watts stood over the dead woman. “Sue Horvit,” he said to no one in particular. “Big worker in her church. And one of the biggest gossips in town. Mean-spirited woman.”

“She won't gossip anymore,” Gordie said, punching out his empty brass and reloading. “But why did she come in here blazing away with a shotgun.”

Gordie looked up. “Oh ... fuck you!”

The room rocked with laughter. THAT'S IT, CHILI PEPPER. SHOW SOME SPIRIT. LET EVERYONE KNOW YOU HAVE BIG COJONES. OH, BEFORE I GO ... YOUR ADORING WIFE HAS RETURNED TO THAT RATHER HUMBLE ABODE YOU CALL HOME. WHY DON'T YOU RUN OVER THERE AND GIVE HER A GREAT BIG JUICY SMACK!

Those in the room could sense the entity was still with them.

Gordie looked at the bodies. “We're running out of room at the morgue. Lee, have Johnny pick them up and bag them.”

The radio began cracking with deputies calling in, wanting to know what the shooting was all about.

“Ask them how they knew about the shooting?” Gordie said.

I TOLD THEM, CACTUS-HEAD.

Gordie ignored that and said, “Mack, once you get up off the floor, tell them that everything is under control and to continue with their assignments. I'll be at my house for about an hour.” He walked out to his car.

“I really hope that crap-head is over at Gordie's,” Watts said. “If he is, that ex-jock is about to find out that there are some tough ol' boys in this world who don't give a damn about past glories on the playing field.”

“Hey!” Angel called from the hall. “I gotta have something to wear. I can't walk around in my panties!”

 

 

When Sunny left the Jennings' house – leaving Richard and Linda alone with their plans of breaking through to the other side and beyond – she looked back, and knew then that all pretense was over.

There was no house.

Just a charred foundation and several neatly stacked piles of bricks.

She felt like crying and screaming and jumping up and down in frustration.

Instead, with a sigh, she put the car in gear and drove back to the sheriffs office.

 

 

“Funky,” Sgt. Janet Dixon said, as she rode patrol with Deputy Hunt. “You feel it, Duane?”

“Yeah. Just look at those people all gathered on the yards and sidewalks. They're just standing there, staring at us.”

“With no emotion on their faces. Their eyes look dead.”

Duane radioed to other units. All units were reporting the same thing: the citizens of Willowdale, young and old, were all behaving very strangely.

Sheriff Gordie Rivera found that out when he walked into his house.

Chuck Golden was sprawled in a chair in the den, one big hand wrapped around a can of beer. He grinning arrogantly, knowingly, at Gordie.

“I helped myself to the beer, Gordie-baby. I figured you wouldn't mind.”

Like a spring that had been wound too tight, Gordie suddenly relaxed. He grinned at the man. “You figured wrong, Chuckie-baby.”

With fists balled, he stepped forward and gave Chuckie-baby five on the side of his jaw, knocking the man out of the chair and to his knees, on the carpeted floor. Which needed cleaning, Gordie noticed.

Gordie had grown up on the fringes of a tough neighborhood in Denver, learning early that there is no such thing as a fair fight. There is just a winner and a loser. The sheriff of Blanco County took another step and kicked Chuckie-baby in the mouth. Chuckie's pearlies bounced around the room, and he screamed in pain. He tried to crawl toward the door. One more boot to the side of his head, and he stopped screaming and crawling.

“Have you lost your goddamn mind!” Mrs. Rivera screamed from the archway leading from the hall to the den.

Gordie walked over and back-handed her. Not with all his strength, but hard enough to get her undivided attention for the first time in a long time.

The pop knocked her back against the hall wall, blood leaking from one corner of her mouth. Her eyes were very wide and very frightened. She knew she had pushed Gordie past the limit, for Gordie, she knew, had never struck a woman in his life . . . not even in the line of duty.

“Gordie, listen to me ...” Her speech was slurred, and not from the blow she'd just received. She reeked of booze. And her body odor was enough to kill flies. She smelled like she hadn't bathed in days.

Chuckie-baby moaned and stirred on the floor. He managed to get to his hands and knees, blood dripping from his busted mouth. Gordie opened the front door, propping it open with the telephone stand. Then, with one hand firmly gripping the denim covering Chuckie-baby's ass, and the other hand on Chuckie-baby's dirty shirt collar, Gordie propelled the man out the front door. Chuckie landed on his face and belly in the yard. Which needed mowing, Gordie noted.

He turned to his wife . . . loosely speaking. “You have one minute to get your crap together and carry your ass.”

“You're crazy!” she spat the words at him. “You've lost your mind.”

“Fifty seconds and counting.”

She ran past him and out the front door, screaming curses at him. She stood over her fallen hero; a lone cheerleader trying to resurrect that which never was.

When Gordie pulled his pistol from leather and jacked back the hammer, the cheerleading got really frantic. When Gordie put a round about a foot from her tootsies, that was all the incentive hero and ex-pom-pom girl needed.

Gordie watched them hightail it down the middle of the deserted street, hero running yards ahead of pom-pom and picking up speed.

Gordie felt an immense sense of relief at the sight of his wife running away.

“Come back here, you son-of-a-bitch!” she squalled at Chuckie-baby. “All those press clippings you showed me said you were a hero. Some hero.”

If Chuckie had a reply, Gordie didn't hear it.

Gordie shut the door and locked it, then took a shower. To his surprise, he found himself humming as he rub-a-dubbed. And thinking of Sunny.

 

 

Sunny drove Angel and Howie back to their house on the nice street in the upper income part of town.

“Don't leave,” Angel said. “We'll just get some stuff, and be right back.”

Just after they turned onto their street, Angel had said that neither of them wanted to stay at home. “What's the matter?” Sunny asked, pulling into the driveway.

Howard Ingram answered that question. He jerked open the front door and yelled, “Get your ass back in this house, Angel!”

“No way,” the girl muttered.

“You goddamn little bitch!” the father yelled at her. “I'll tear your ass up; in more ways than one.” He started off the porch.

Sunny quickly backed out of the drive. “Where is your mother, kids?”

“Drunk, the last time we saw her,” Howie said.

“Maybe the pressure got to her,” Sunny suggested.

“She partied all night with the teenage boy who lives next door,” Angel said matter-of-factly.