Forever Never Ends (28 page)

"Daddy?"

Robert turned, his fists balled. Ginger rubbed a sleepy eye, clutching a stuffed frog to her chest. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

"What are you doing out of bed, honey?" He relaxed his hands and knelt to her. She looked so much like Tamara.

"Had a bad dream." She stood there sniffling in her flannel circus pajamas as he hugged her.

"It's okay now. Let me tuck you back in, and you can tell me all about it if you want."

"I want Mommy."

"Mommy's still not home, sweetheart. But she will be, soon."

"Not if the Dirt Mouth eats her."

"Dirt Mouth?" Robert almost grinned, but his daughter's serious green eyes stopped him.

"The Dirt Mouth in the mountains." She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were something she had seen in a nature program on television.

"Honey, there's no such thing—"

"Mommy said you have to trust your dreams. Because dreams are nature, and nature never lies. And the Dirt Mouth was in my dreams. And Mommy was on the mountain with it."

"Dreams are just little tricks the brain plays on us while we're asleep. Games to help pass the night while we’re resting."

"Where's Mommy, then?"

"Just . . . out somewhere, honey."

"Out with the Dirt Mouth. And it’s going to eat the whole mountain, Daddy. It wants to eat everybody and all the trees and things."

Robert stroked Ginger's hair and held her to his chest. "It's just a bad dream, honey. Let's get you back to bed, and in the morning you'll see that Mommy will be home and the sun will come up and there won't be any mean old dirt mouths around."

He lifted her and carried her back to bed.

God, she's growing so fast. Blonde and gorgeous and bright eyed. She's going to be sensitive, just like her mother. She has a wonderful imagination, too.

Just like her mother.

He tucked her under the blankets and kissed her forehead. He couldn't help it. He had to know. Just in case. "Where was Mommy, honey? In your dream, I mean?"

"On the mountain, with the bad people. The barefooted mountain. Where the Dirt Mouth is, and the green light."

She yawned, then her tiny eyelashes flickered as her eyelids relaxed.

"Sleep tight, sugar. Daddy will make everything better."

"‘Kay, Daddy."

He turned off the light. Her voice came from the darkness.

“Daddy, what’s a
shu-shaaa
?”

“Shu-shaaa? I don’t know, honey.”

“It’s scary.”

"Don't you worry," he said to the dark bed. "Nothing bad can happen to you. Not while I’m around."

He found that lying was easy, once you got used to it. He started to sing “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and was on the third round of masters and dames when Ginger fell asleep.

He went out on the porch to smoke a cigarette and wait.

***

Nettie prayed.

She asked the Lord why He had allowed her to trip over that little round headstone that was really only a rock, the marker for an ancient, anonymous grave. She should have seen it gleaming like a white-capped tooth under the grinning curd of the moon. But she had run in a panic, out of the side door of the church into the dark graveyard. And she had been blind with fear.

What purpose could the Lord have in breaking her ankle? And she was scared to call for help, because help might come in the hideous form of the preacher's wife.

Or the preacher himself, standing there in the glow of the vestry lights with his pants around his ankles and his eyes as deep as devil pits. Maybe if she could reach the parsonage, maybe if Sarah were home, maybe if she could crawl . . .

It was only forty yards. But the pain was a ring of dull fire above her foot and she had to pull herself along by digging her hands into the turf and dragging herself forward a few feet at a time. As she slid, the earth sent its small stones digging into her hip and the grass tugged at her skirt. She was only a dozen yards from the church when she heard the sounds.

At first she thought it was a burst water pipe, or a wet wind cutting through the rags of the treetops. Then she saw them, shadows shuffling out of the forest at the edge of the cemetery. She was about to call out, thinking they could help her.

But who would be walking around the cemetery on the dead edge of midnight?

Then she saw their eyes. Three pairs of fluorescent orbs, dancing in the dark like fat fireflies. It was more of
them.

More of whatever Amanda Blevins had become.

Nettie bit her tongue so she wouldn't scream and a seam of bright pain flashed across her mouth. She grabbed her crippled leg with both hands and rolled over, trying to swallow her whimpers of agony. She huddled behind a huge marble slab, pressing against its cold smoothness. The inscription on the headstone, "William Franklin Lemly, 1902-1984," was carved in dark relief against the moon-bathed alabaster. Bill's grandfather.

"Help me, Bill," she whispered, her cheek against the slab. The three figures stepped—
“stepped” wasn't the right word
,
they’re FLOWING
—into the moonlight, and Nettie saw the green pallor of their flesh. Their heads made her think of wax fruit dipped in motor oil.

They flowed over the grass-covered bones of the dead as if they were dead themselves, with that same moist slogging that Amanda had made while entering the church, a dribble of mucus and gelatin. She recognized two of them, Hank and Ellen Painter, parishioners of Windshake Baptist who lived out on Stony Fork. The third was too rotten to be identifiable. It was sexless beneath its ripped and rotten clothing.

The three approached the light of the church door like wise men come to see a miracle image. Nettie peered around the stone as they passed, certain that they would hear her heart hammering. But their radiant eyes stayed fixed on their beloved church.

Nettie watched them stumble up the stairs, mashing together as they all tried to go inside at the same time. They fell into the church and moaned in wet voices, singing praises to or raising curses against whatever god they now followed.

Nettie clawed her way across the grass, thinking of it as hair, the scalp of an earth that sweated dew and breathed the wind. A bright orange spear of pain flamed up her leg. She crawled behind a tall monument topped by an angel that held a harp and gazed toward heaven. Nettie rested her back against it, careful to keep the monument between herself and the church, and looked toward heaven herself.

Lord, what wonders you have wrought
, she prayed.
If this is the End Times, please give me the strength to endure Your plagues. If this is the first trumpet note, then may all seven of Your angels blow in their turn. Thy will be done. Please forgive me, Father, but I'm going to try to live. Because I kind of liked the way my life was going before hell gave up its demons. So forgive me for being human, but I'm not quite ready to give You my ghost. Amen.

Through a shrub twenty yards away, she looked wistfully at her car sparkling in the asphalt parking lot under the security light. But the car was a straight drive, and she couldn't operate the clutch because of her shattered ankle. Her best hope was to reach the parsonage and phone for help.

Assuming that either Sarah was home or the door was unlocked. Assuming that Sarah wasn't one of
them.
Assuming Nettie covered the open stretch of graveyard without being seen by the creatures. Assuming she didn't pass out from pain before she reached the front porch.

She clenched her jaw and wriggled on her belly like a serpent sent out of the garden.

***

Emerland unlocked the gate. The chain-link fence was topped with razor wire, designed to put second thoughts into the minds of would-be thieves. He considered fleeing for the darkness that hung on all sides of the compound. But the Mull geezer still had the shotgun, and Emerland could feel its blunt power throbbing anxiously somewhere behind him. Plus, to be honest with himself, all that talk of green-eyed plant people and mountain-eating Earth Mouths had put him on edge.

Though Emerland had seen the strange people along the road, he still thought Mull and DeWalt were nuts. This was the twenty-first century, for God's sake. Science had pretty much squashed any prospect of monsters or ghosts or vampires rising out of the ground. And aliens had become plastic clichés because of their overuse by hack fiction writers and low-budget movie producers.

But good old human lunacy was a reliable constant, a proven horror that spanned history. And Emerland was positive that he could rely on Old Man Mull to do the unpredictable.

He turned back to the trio, flinching against the beams of the Mercedes’s headlights. Chester, DeWalt, and the flaky psychic babe were black shadows against the yellow brightness.

"There you go," he said. "I just hope the security guards don't swing by."

But there were no security guards. The company that had brokered his construction company's insurance had insisted on around-the-clock protection because of the dynamite. Emerland had agreed in writing, but had never seen the point in wasting money on security. Who gave a damn if somebody stole something or if the whole place blew to hell if you had insurance that would cover the damage?

"Now unlock the dynamite shed," grunted the skinniest shadow, the one with the shotgun.

Emerland didn't bother arguing. He led the way past the metal hulks of bulldozers and cement mixers and stacks of fat-grooved truck tires to a small shed at the back of the compound. DeWalt carried the flashlight that Chester had found in Emerland's glove compartment, but the moon was so bright in the clear sky that they didn't need it. Emerland fumbled with the lock in the plywood door, cursing himself for being such a control freak that he needed a key to everything that had
Emerland Enterprises
stamped on it.

Then the lock popped and the door swung open with a rusty groan of hinges. DeWalt stepped inside with the flashlight. Emerland felt the gun barrel in his back and followed DeWalt.

"Do you know how to use this stuff?" Chester asked DeWalt.

"Sort of. I read the
Anarchist Cookbook
back in my younger days. You need a blasting cap, fuse wire, an electrical detonator switch. And some of those."

He pointed to the stack of small, paper-covered rods that were in an open crate on a shelf. "How many does it take?" DeWalt asked Emerland.

"How the hell do I know? I'm a developer, not a demolition man," Emerland said.

"Shut your rat hole, Emerland," said Chester. "Grab two dozen. Pass some to Tamara, here."

Emerland watched as Chester filled his overall pockets with the heavy sticks.

"Hey, DeWalt, you overeducated Yankee, why don't you read what it says under the red letters there?” Chester said, pointing to the warning written on the wooden crate. “Then, whatever it says
not
to do, just do it. That ought to make some sort of snap, crackle, and pop or another."

"Chester, you're an idiot savant," DeWalt said.

"I don't take kindly to the ‘idiot’ part, but I'll take that other fancy word as some sort of praise."

"If I remember right—and you'll have to forgive me, because my brain was a little souped up back in those days—then you attach the wire to this detonator and then to the blasting cap. This button sends an electric charge through the wire that heats up the stuff in the cap, then—"

"Fucking fireworks,” Chester said. “Sets off the rest of the dynamite."

"Well, technically, this is TNT, not dynamite."

"What-the-hell-ever. As long as it makes a bang."

Emerland stepped back from the door, seeing that the two men were so intent on collecting the TNT that they didn't notice him. He glanced at the creamy-skinned blonde. Damn, she was good-looking. If only circumstances were different, he wouldn't mind having her in his hot tub on Sugarfoot, popping the cork on some Dom Perignon. He wondered if insanity was contagious.

"Um, guys,” she said. "The thing’s getting hungrier. I've got a feeling that we better move before the sun comes up."

Emerland's arousal shriveled. He tried to slink behind a broken motor grader.

"Not so fast, scumbucket," Chester said without turning. Emerland's feet locked. He passed the time by looking up the red mud slope of the clear-cut mountain to the shining tower of Sugarfoot Condominiums. It was beautiful against the starry sky, a man-made testament to the power of dreams. He wished he were there now, behind one of the tiny lights among the plush carpet and clean satin sheets and filthy-rich tourists. Away from grubby madmen and this sweet-cheeked Nostradamus.

They were walking back to the car, the woman and DeWalt clutching armfuls of dynamite, when something stumbled against the fence. Emerland heard the thin jingle of wire, then turned and saw the fruit of nightmares.

It had once been a woman, he could tell that much, because its stringy hair fell like soggy bean sprouts over dripping breasts. The eyes glowed with deep, irradiant longing as its pale fingers hooked the metal links. "Shu-shaaa . . . kish . . . treeeez . . ."

Had the sounds come from that thing's raw wet mouth that gaped too widely to be human? Emerland was studying the vaguely familiar cheekbones and the wide skull that shone like pallid cheese in the moonlight. He suddenly recognized her—
no, IT, not HER
—as one of the aerobics instructors at Sugarfoot. One that he had shared several rather private workouts with.

No.

This wasn't happening
.

Emerland was still looking at the face, looking for the woman who had once worn that skin before . . .
before the Earth Mouth-zombiemaker-worldeater came
.

Then the face disappeared as the thunder of Chester's shotgun shredded the thing’s upper torso into a rain of pulp.

"They're out there. I see them coming," Tamara said in the sudden dead calm that followed the explosion.

Tamara led the way as they ran to the Mercedes. Emerland was frozen to the spot, unable to rip his gaze from the quivering stump of the creature that now sagged to the ground, leaving a viscous trail of fluid on the fence that shimmered in the moonlight. Then he regained the use of his legs and dashed to the car, passing the others and sliding behind the driver's seat of the Mercedes.