Darkly The Thunder (14 page)

But Gordie couldn't understand the tears that were running down the man's face. Why Shriver was silently weeping.

I AM READY TO BEGIN MY EPOCH.

Shriver jerked his head up, his eyes wide with fear.

Two nurses entered the building and walked over to the doctors.

“You two it?” Anderson asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What's going on?” Gordie asked.

I SAID I AM READY!

“This is all that showed up for the second shift at the hospital,” Anderson explained.

“What about the patients?”

Anderson's expression hardened. “There are no patients, Sheriff.”

“You want to clarify that?” Watts asked. “The hospital was nearly full a couple of days ago.”

I AM READY TO PROCEED, GREASEBALL.

The nurses moved closer together, fear in their eyes and on their faces.

Sunny rose from her chair. “Where should I do this, Gordie?”

“Use my office. And close the door, please.” He smiled at her.

She returned the smile and walked to his office, closing the door behind her.

All experienced the sensation as the Fury moved closer, and then a slight lessening, much like the sensation when a plane has achieved cruising speed. Gordie wondered what it was like in his office.

“The hospital has been turned into a slaughterhouse,” Anderson said. “The scene is terrible, just . . . incredibly indescribable.”

Shriver sat down at a table and began weeping.

“His wife was in the hospital for minor surgery,” Anderson said. “You'd better go over there, Sheriff. And take a strong stomach with you.”

I WAS CREATED EONS AGO, the voice boomed, smug and oily. AND WHILE IT MIGHT NOT APPEAR SO, I AM REALLY A SHY, MODEST, AND UNASSUMING BEING . . .

Gordie gave the voice the middle finger and walked out of the building.

They found the first body on the front lawn of the small hospital.

Norris knelt down, careful not to touch the woman. He looked up at Gordie. “You know her?”

“Louise Farmer. She worked here.”

“Not a mark on her,” Bergman said. “But, God, look at her head. There's something wrong with it.”

The head appeared to be smaller than Gordie remembered. He knelt down and thumped the head. A hollow sound emanated from the single thump.

“Sounds empty,” Norris said.

“Yeah.”

The men walked on. The second body was found on the entrance steps. A boy of about ten. The head appeared slightly shrunken. Bergman thumped it. The same hollow sound.

The men walked up the steps and entered the building. They could all hear the high single note of a machine that monitored life signs. It was signaling a straight line. Dead.

Just like the receptionist – dead. And the nurse sprawled grotesquely on the floor—dead. And the young intern – dead.

And all with that same peculiar indented-head look. The head, when thumped, sounding as hollow as a bass drum.
Thonk!

Bergman was busy taking pictures.

Gordie looked in radiology. The operator was lying on the floor—dead. He walked on down the hall. The straight line wailing was getting louder. He looked in on the patient. The entire chest cavity was ripped open, organs flung around the room, the bed slick with blood.

Bergman took a picture of that.

Norris walked out of a lounge. “Slaughterhouse in there. Bodies literally ripped apart. If it can kill without tearing the people apart, why does it do so?”

Bergman took a picture of the lounge and its gory walls and floor. “Because it wants to,” he said.

The monitoring machine in the blood-splattered room was turned off. After the shrillness of the beep, the silence was slightly unnerving.

The men walked on, their boot heels striking sharply on the polished tile floor. They looked into a few more rooms, and every room contained death, singularly and in bloody, mangled heaps.

“We've got to check every room,” Gordie said. “But as God is my witness, I don't want to.”

“Especially the nursery,” Norris said, his voice low.

“Surely, it wouldn't!” Bergman protested, his voice filled with disgust.

AND WHY NOT?

Gordie never stopped walking. “I thought you were having your life story taken down for posterity?”

I HAD TO TAKE A BREAK. IT'S VERY EMBARRASSING HAVING TO BARE ONE'S SOUL. IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING.

They came to the nursery and looked in. The babies were dead – none of the men really expected to find them alive. But it was a very ugly and disgusting sight.

And like all the others, their little heads were indented, shrunken.

Standing in the doorway, their faces clearly showing their anger, Bergman asked, “But why kill the babies?”

“I would guess that's the only way the Fury can absorb innocence,” Gordie said. “Without some degree of innocence, I don't believe it could function. It would be nothing more than a wild, uncontrollable mass.”

VERY, VERY GOOD, GREASEBALL. FOR A STUPID HALF-IRISH TORTILLA-HEAD, YOU'RE REALLY SHARP. THE BRATS WERE TASTY, TOO. BYE BYE.

They could all tell when the Fury left them. None could as yet tell when it made its appearance; not without Howie and his computers.

“I wonder what its real reason was for visiting us?” Norris asked.

Gordie led the way out of the nursery. “I like to think that Sand is worrying it.”

“It'll be dark soon,” Bergman said. “Let's check out the rest of this place and get gone.”

 

 

Gordie read Sunny's notes and listened to the Fury's droning on the tape recorder. He could only listen for a few minutes before turning it off.

“It's the most disgusting thing I have ever heard,” Sunny said. “He, it, speaks of destroying entire civilizations. Wiping out cultures.”

“Here it comes!” Howie called from his tiny, cluttered space.

The screen used to monitor the Fury's movements went wild with blips at its approach.

ALL RISE! ALL HAIL FURY THE MAGNIFICENT!

No one moved.

WHAT A BUNCH OF SORE LOSERS.

“What do you want, you ugly thug?” Angel blurted, standing with her hands on her hips, a defiant look on her face.

The Fury pulsated in the room for a few seconds, and all knew it was studying the girl. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LOOK LIKE, BITCH?

“Because nobody could do the things you do and be very pretty.”

YOU THINK I'M UGLY, LITTLE CHICKIE? JUST HANG YOUR PEEPERS ON THIS!

Chuckie-baby Golden was suddenly deposited into the room. A beer can had been jammed into his mouth – all the way in. The back of his neck was poked out from the force of the rammed-in can. He had been split from throat to groin. Some of his intestines were wrapped around his thick neck, then neatly tied in a bow behind his head. Both his legs had been broken in many places. They were twisted together like rubber bands.

NOW THAT'S UGLY!

Maj. Jackson had grabbed Angel and turned her face away from the sight, holding her to him. He had a little girl at home, about Angel's age. He wondered if he'd ever see her again? He had a hunch he would not.

What happened to Chuckie-baby had just happened. Blood was still leaking from his horrible wounds, and his guts were steaming from the coolness of late afternoon.

AND IF THAT ISN'T UGLY ENOUGH, TRY THIS!

The kid who had been gang-raped was flung from his cot and rolled along the hall, squalling in fright and pain, the doctors and nurses running after him. The door slammed open, depositing him in the big main room of the sheriffs office. He was jerked to his feet and shoved stumbling around the floor, his face wild with terror. Screams pushed from his throat, as his legs were forced to propel him along. He was rammed into the water fountain, his head jerked back. His face was slammed into the dispenser, the metal cone entering through the skull, ripping through and into his brain.

His screaming ended in a gurgle. The kid hung on the fountain, his arms slowly relaxing and falling to his side as death took him.

DO BOP DE DO BOP DE DO BOP, DE DO.

The kid fell off the fountain, plopping to the floor.

“Fury is gone,” Howie called from his little room.

“Not far enough,” Watts summed up the feelings of all in the room.

Dr. Shriver uttered a moan and passed out cold, Sgt. Preston catching the man before he could bust his head on the floor.

The college girls were clinging to one another, their eyes just a bit wild.

And because of a scene unfolding on the outskirts of town, the whole world was about thirty-six hours away from learning the plight of Willowdale.

 

 

“What do you mean I can't get into town? I live there, officer,” the man said.

“I'm sorry, sir. But no one is allowed to enter the town.”

“By whose orders?”

The state patrol officer then said what he had been instructed to say by his commander, who had been instructed by Governor Siatos. “Sheriff Gordie Rivera.”

“But why?”

“I'm sorry, sir. I cannot divulge that information at this time.”

“But, our,” he waved a hand toward the town, “daughter is in there, officer.”

“Name?”

“Carol Ann Russell.”

The trooper consulted a list on a clipboard. “I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, sir, but your daughter was in an accident. She's dead.”

“My . . . our ... Carol, is
dead?
”

“Yes, sir. I'm sorry There is no easy way to inform someone of a death.”

“How did she . . . I mean . . .”

“Sir, I don't know.”

And because of a slight screwup somewhere along the chain of command, the state patrolman did not know what to tell anyone who was turned away about where they were supposed to go.

“Well, officer, where is the body? Where are we supposed to go for the night? Our home is in Willowdale; my business is there.”

The trooper looked at the others around him. Looked at the deputy standing on the other side of the barricade. They all shrugged their shoulders. They couldn't help.

Just a slight screwup. Like the Fury said about the horse and the shoe and the rider and the war.

The man and woman, both numbed and close to tears, left, heading out of the valley. They drove to another town, about twenty-five miles away, and checked into a motel.

Mr. Russell asked the clerk, “What in the world is happening over in Willowdale?”

“Nothing that I know of, sir.”

“Well, the whole town is sealed off by the state patrol. They won't let anybody in; and we
live
there!”

“They say our daughter is dead,” Mrs. Russell said. “But we can't get in to see the body.”

“That is odd. There hasn't been a thing on the news.” She thought for a moment. “I have a friend in Willowdale. Let me give her a call.”

She tried several times, getting the same results each time. “The system is down,” she told the parents of Carol Ann. “I can't get through. All the operator says is that communications have been temporarily disrupted, and crews are working trying to repair it.”

A city cop came in for supper, and the desk clerk waved him over. “What's going on in Willowdale?”

He shook his head. “I don't know. All departments in this area have been asked to use alternate frequencies and leave 31.7 open. And there are a lot of strange coded messages, that make absolutely no sense, being passed between the Blanco S.O. and the state patrol.”

The owner/manager of the local radio station had stopped in for a drink, and paused to listen to the conversation at the front desk. A former network newsman who had left the big city rat race for a calmer existence, he quickly smelled a story.

“Pardon me,” he said to the red-eyed mother. “You say the state police won't let you into Willowdale?”

“That's right. Our daughter was killed, and we can't even get in to see the body, or find out what happened or anything!”

“You're staying here tonight?”

“Until we can get back to our home,” Mr. Russell said. “No telling when that will be. I'm gonna sue the damn state, by God. Somebody is gonna pick up the tab for our rooms and meals.”

“I'll find out what's going on.” He returned to his station and put in a call to his old network, Los Angeles bureau. “Mike Stapleton here, Tom. How you been? Good. Yeah. Me, too. Listen, what have you people got on this breaking story in Willowdale, Colorado?”

“What's a Willowdale, Mike?”

Mike spoke the magic words. “The state patrol is covering something up, Tom.”

“Bring me up to date.”

Mike told all that he knew.

“How far up do you think it goes?”

Mike took a chance. “I'd say all the way to the governor's mansion.”

“You want to check it out for us?”

“Damn right.”

“Go.”

Willowdale was off the beaten path. The joke was that you couldn't get there from wherever you were; you had to go somewhere else and start. The nearest interstate was seventy-five miles away. No big towns in the area. But the two-lanes were in good shape, and Mike made good time. As he topped the ridge of mountains and looked down into the valley, he felt his guts tighten up.

Red and blue flashing lights were showing up at various checkpoints around the town. Mike had spent twenty years with the network, covering hundreds of stories all around the world. He sensed he'd found a big one.

He pulled up to the checkpoint and got out, walking up to the line of cammie-clad troopers. “Mike Stapleton,” he announced. Everybody knew Mike Stapleton, or so he thought. Big deal ex-reporter.

“So?” The lieutenant of state patrol looked at him.

“I'm handling this story for the network. What's going on in there.” He looked toward the town. No smoke, no sounds of rioting, no gunfire.

“The Blanco County Sheriffs Department is hunting for a killer. We've sealed off the town.”

From the ridge overlooking the valley, Mike had counted at least eight checkpoints, and he suspected there were more. Too many cops. And all state boys . . . and girls, he amended that, spotting several gun-toting women in urban cammies. And while they might indeed be hunting a killer, there was still something funky going on. What killer? There had been nothing on the news wire about any massive manhunt, or any killings in this area, for that matter.

“I'd like to get an official statement on the manhunt, officer.”

“That would have to come from Sheriff Gordie Rivera.”

“All right.” Mike waited. None of the cops moved. “Are you going to get him for me?”

“He's busy.”

“Well, how do I get in touch with him?” Mike was getting the runaround and knew it.

“Might try phoning.”

“I've been told the system is down.”

“Then you'll just have to wait until it's repaired, won't you?”

Mike stared at the patrolman. “I don't like your attitude, officer.”

“That's your problem. Mine is this: I've been ordered to keep people out of Willowdale, and that is exactly what I intend to do.”

“And that includes the press?”

“You're people, aren't you?”

Mike decided to switch tactics. “The public has a right to know what is going on.”