Cat's Cradle (19 page)

The creature called Mickey Reynolds sat on the floor and looked at the growing pool of colored liquid. The cat watched just as intently. Neither feline nor once-human took their eyes from the growing pool of fresh, living, evil rot.

They watched, and waited.

What had once been Eddie Brown felt a growing wetness on the floor beneath where he lay, resting. His animal mind had heard a slight cracking sound a few moments before, but he had paid it no attention. It had not seemed to represent any danger. Now he sat up, peering through the gloom.

The floor had cracked, a thick ooze spreading out from the separating concrete. A foulness filled the basement as the thickness gathered, dark red in color. Groaning whispered hoarsely, faintly, from the crack in the dusty floor.

A thin, finger-like object pushed out of the crack, wet and slimy from the stinking fluid. It pushed out again and again, seeking freedom, but not yet able to attain the release.

Eddie and his new friend, the cat, waited and watched.

* * *

Betty Reynolds and her kids squatted in the ruins of what had once been a service station/motel by the side of the highway. It had not been used as such for years. The concrete floor of the old station had cracked, a thick, smelly, red-colored liquid oozed from the crack, spreading its thickness over a small portion of the dirty floor. A wrinkled object, vaguely resembling an ape-like finger, protruded from the crack. It worked in and out, up and down, attempting to enlarge the crack in the cement. Betty and her children squatted in their own filth. They watched and waited.

* * *

And on the second floor of the combination garage and storage building, Anya began laughing softly. A laugh of the darkest evil, containing the ultimate of depravity.

Pet had instructed the gathering of cats around the building and the nearby house to stay close, but to conceal themselves, to be cautious, to be especially wary of any human invaders. For it was not yet time to make their move. Almost time. But not quite.

Pet looked around at its companion’s dark, ugly laughter. Anya’s eyes were gleaming in the gloom of the storage area; gleaming so brightly as to illuminate the pockets of dust and cobwebs. The girl’s facial features were changing, becoming an old mask that reflected ten thousand years of lust and torture and evil. Her face kept changing, from that of a young girl, to an old, snaggletoothed hag. The girl’s hands were curled into claws, opening and closing in time with her wild laughter.

Slowly, her face became once more that of a child, with the exception of her eyes. They glowed with evil.

Both the girl and the cat could sense, could smell the Old Ones attempting to push their way out of the earth’s crust, slowly making their way through the tons of rock that covered them, rock placed over them by the Master of all that is good and kind and loving and caring.

Anya spat on the floor at just the thought of Him.

Pet padded to a corner and howled her contempt.

The moment was near-very near. Both knew it. A bit more patience was all that was needed. What a stroke of unexpected luck it had been for that engineer to have discovered their hiding place and roused them from their sleep cycle.

Anya’s depraved laughter tapered off to an evil chuckling. Her hands were once more those of a young girl. Her eyes were once more dark and unreadable. And the formerly unseen minions of the Dark One, those which lay under the earth’s surface all over the world, were, in this locality, struggling to be free, hearing and heeding the call of the Master.

The moment was very near.

5

“All rolling units report,” Dan radioed.

All units reported the same thing: no large bands of cats had been sighted. But the dogs they did spot were behaving strangely. Sort of cowed and very wary.

Dan had ordered one car to swing by the tree where he and Taylor had spotted the cats in the branches. The tree was void of felines.

“Then they’ve been warned off,” Mike said, standing behind the men.

Taylor turned around, not sure he’d heard correctly. “Warned off? By whom?”

Before Mike could reply, a station wagon pulled into the drive. HPB Trucking on its doors. Lou Lamotta behind the wheel.

Dan reached into his car and took out his M-10, jacking a round into the chamber. He checked the fire selector, moving it a full one hundred and eighty degrees from semi to full auto. He clicked the safety from safe to fire.

Lou’s eyes widened. He closed the wagon door carefully. “Hey, Sheriff. Whoa, now. I’m on your side, remember? ”

“You’re on nobody’s side but your own, Lou You wrap yourself in the flag like some sort of goddamn shroud. So let’s not kid each other. Now what in the hell are you doing on my property?”

Lou smiled his damnable smile. “I intercepted your transmissions, ol’ buddy.”

Dan started to call the man a liar, then closed his mouth as an idea popped into his head. Somebody at the office was pipelining to Lou. Had to be. Dan had looked at the OSS’s radio equipment. They were not equipped with de-scramblers. So the man had someone feeding him information.

Lou said, “I wanted to see these killer kitty cats. I’ve got some lab boys on the way to gather up the carcasses.” He looked at the lethal little .45 caliber spitter in Dan’s hands. His smile widened. “You’d really like to use that on me, wouldn’t you, Sheriff?”

“I wouldn’t like to, Lou. But I would.” Dan’s words came out low and cold and very menacing. “I place more emphasis on human life than you do. Even your life.”

Lou got a kick out of that. He slowly nodded his head.

“Maybe I came on a little hard, Dan. With you. I read you wrong. So I’m backing off what I said. Forget I said it, if you can. You just don’t understand the importance of my work, that’s all.”

“I understand the importance, Lou. Not the way you go about it. Don’t forget, I worked out west when you people were butchering farmers’ and ranchers’ cattle-without compensating the owners for their loss.”

“I don’t forget anything, Sheriff.”

Dan believed that. The man was brilliantly insane.

Dan had noticed his wife leaving the porch and entering the house. She returned, banging the screen door, a carbine in her hands, a thirty round clip stuck in the weapon’s belly.

Lou looked at her, the weapon, and sighed.

Vonne said, “So you’re the man who is going to rape me and my daughter, right?”

Lou sighed again, deeper.

“Would you like to try that now?” Vonne asked.

“No, ma’am,” Lou said. “But I will most certainly remember that you threatened me.”

Vonne lifted the muzzle of the carbine, aiming squarely at Lou’s crotch.

Lou sucked in his gut and turned sideways. He’d rather be hip-shot than shot in the balls. “Jesus, Mrs. Garrett! Can’t you people take a little joke?”

“As both a woman and mother of a daughter, Mr. Lamotta, I don’t consider rape a joking matter.” Lou had lost his smile. He forced it back to his lips.

“I guess not, Mrs. Garrett.” He cut his eyes at the approach of two vans. “I guess I made a mistake by coming on high-handed with you people. But I can’t undo what has been said and done.” He looked at Carl and Mike. He guessed accurately that these were not the average give-it-hell and have-a-good-time college boys. He knew all about Mike’s shooting of the punks, and he sensed, again accurately, that Carl had his father’s no-backup in him. Both young men had shotguns in their hands and pistols belted at their waist. Captain Taylor had shifted positions. The man now held one of the meanest-looking shotguns Lou had ever seen. It had been Pachmayred and Parkerized, and the extension tube for the magazine ended just short of the muzzle. “Remington model 1100 mag?”

“Uh-huh,” Taylor said.

“Nice weapon,”

“Just dandy.’

This guy has mean eyes, Lou thought. “You ever shot a man with one of those?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Messy, wasn’t it?”

“But damned effective. I shot him from about fifteen inches. Blew his whole backbone out. Along with a lot of his guts. And other things.”

Lou swallowed. “Uh ...
yeah
! Well. I’ll just be helping the boys and girls load up the kitty cats.”

“You do that,” Langway said, stepping out from the corner of the house. He held an M-16 in his hands. “I came the back way,” he said to Taylor.

“Welcome to the party,” his CO said.

Lou walked off, stepping carefully. He muttered, “Whole bunch is trigger-happy.”

The lab crew quickly and very efficiently bagged the dead cats. They used very thick, heavy gloves that were, Dan suspected, steel wire enforced against bites. Many of the cats were only wounded. Those were hit with a knock-out drug of some kind and placed to one side.

Taylor watched for a few moments, then said, “You get the impression they’ve done this many, many times before? ”

“Yes,” Dan said, conscious of his family listening. “I do. With cattle in Colorado and sheep up in Utah. I’ve seen it.”

“What were they doing with the livestock, Mister Garrett?” Mike asked. “Or rather, why were they doing it?”

“I was never able to find out. I was told it had to do with nerve gas. But I’ll never be convinced that was the only reason.”

The boys cut the chicken wire and nailed it over windows, folding a double layer over the bottom windows for extra strength.

“I feel like a jerk not being able to tell the people to do the same,” Taylor said.

“Much more of this and I will tell them,” Dan said. “And Lou Lamotta can drop dead.”

The young people grinned at that.

When the clean-up was concluded, and the OSS people leaving, Lou stuck his head out the wagon window and called in a fake southern accent, “Ya’ll be careful now, you hear?”

“I detest that man,” Vonne said, her arms around the shoulders of Carrie and Linda. “He makes my flesh crawl.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Linda said, fear in her eyes.

“Vonne will talk to you, Linda,” Dan said. He looked at his wife. She nodded.

“What is interesting to me,” Mike said, “is that that government man didn’t even ask why or how the cats got here. He did not seem concerned or interested in the fact that . . . well, higher powers might well be involved in all of this.”

“Higher powers?” Vonne asked from the porch.

“God and Satan,” Mike replied.

“You think God and Satan are involved, son?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, I do,” Mike replied without hesitation. “From everything I know about what is happening here, it’s supernatural. And that takes it right out of mortal hands. I’m not terribly religious, but I think calling in a priest wouldn’t hurt.”

“Right in the middle of Baptist country,” Dan said, unable to hide his smile.

“Dan!” Vonne scolded him. But she too saw the humor in her husband’s remark.

“I just don’t believe we—any of us—really know what we’re facing here.”

Like any good cop, Taylor wasn’t afraid to explore any angle, no matter how foolish it might sound at the outset. “All right, Mike. When do you think we might know what is going on?”

“Whenever God or Satan feels it’s time.”

“You think God is going to help us in this, Mike?” Dan asked.

“Not in any . . . obvious way, I should imagine. He stopped doing that a long time ago. But it sure wouldn’t hurt to ask Him.”

“I have been,” Taylor said simply.

Dan leaned against the car and looked around him. A slow, rueful smile creased his face. “Lamotta may well be the most arrogant and obnoxious man in the world, but he’s sure sharp.”

“How do you mean, Sheriff,” Langway asked.

“Even if we did alert the public as to what took place out here, they wouldn’t believe us. We stood right here and let Lamotta remove all the physical evidence of the attack. We have absolutely no proof it ever took place.”

Taylor looked around him, exasperated at himself for allowing that to take place right under his nose. “Well, I’ll just be goddamned!” he said. He looked heavenward. “Excuse me.”

* * *

Alice and Emily huddled in the cramped closet. They were scared, tired, sore, and hot. Emily had banged her watch on something and the damn thing had quit working. Alice had not worn a watch, so the women had no idea what time it was. To them, it seemed they had been in the closet for hours.

“Emily?” Alice whispered.

“Yes, Alice?”

“I have to tinkle.”

“So do I. Hold it.”

“I’ll try. Emily?”

“Yes, Alice?”

“For some reason, I get the impression there aren’t as many cats out there as before. Do you?”

“Yeah. I get the same feeling. You want to be the one to stick your head out this door?”

“I don’t believe so, Emily.”

Both women had heard the almost silent padding of the cats as many of them left the crumbling shack. The women had no idea where they went or why they had left. Or how many had left. Or how far they had gone. If they had indeed left.

Finally, Emily made up her mind-reluctantly. “I’m going to crack this door just a tiny bit, Alice. If nothing else, we’ll know where we stand.”

“Or squat,” Alice said, with an attempt at humor.

Emily grinned at that. Alice was turning out to be an all-right person. Most of Emily’s earlier feelings about the woman had vanished. She found herself liking Alice-the real Alice-once she had discovered the person beneath the snobbish facade.

Emily looked at Alice in the near darkness of the closet. “You ready?”

“Give it hell, Emily.”

Emily chuckled and cracked the door.

* * *

Herman and Frank found Emily Ramsey’s car. It was parked by the side of the road about a half mile from the truck terminal. They checked it out and discovered no signs of foul play.

“Let’s drive up the road a piece before calling this in,” Frank suggested. “Might find the kids’ car.”

“You’re driving.”

Just around the curve, they found a car registered to Clyde Armstrong. They radioed both finds in.

“Stay right where you are,” Dan said. “I’ll be joining you shortly. ETA five minutes.” Dan looked at his family. “Get in the house and stay put. Don’t come outside for any reason. And that is not a request.”

Vonne smiled at him. “You’re still a sexist pig, old man.”

“Of course,” Dan returned the smile.

The girls laughed.

Vonne waved at him. “Get outta here! And be careful.”

Rolling toward the cars of the missing women and teenagers, Taylor said, “I wonder if Lamotta really heard that call?”

“I doubt it. I think he’s got a pipeline in my office. But I don’t know who it is. Anyway, we’ll know if he’s monitoring our tach frequency when we get to the site.”

“I wish I knew how all this was going to end.”

Dan glanced at him. “Do you, Tay? Really?”

Captain Taylor crossed himself and remained silent.

* * *

The old shack was empty. Except for stinking piles of cat crap that littered the floor. Emily cautiously opened the door a tad wider and looked out, her pistol in her right hand. Emily pushed the door open wider still. Nothing came leaping and snarling and howling at them. The only sound was the seemingly loud beating of the women’s hearts.

Emily straightened up, her knee joints cracking as she did so. She carefully and thoroughly inspected the room. No cats. Still standing in the closet door, she looked out through the glassless windows. No cats could be seen. But as the wind changed, it brought with it a very foul odor. The stench, somehow familiar to Emily, wrinkled her nose as it assaulted her nostrils.

“Phew, Emily,” Alice said. “What is that smell?”

“I don’t know. But it’s somehow familiar to me. I ...” Then it came to her. Old blood and rotting flesh. She didn’t mention that to Alice. But she wondered where the odor was coming from, and the source of it.

Emily stepped out into the dirty, cobwebby room. She inspected the other two rooms of the shack. No cats.

Alice turned as a movement caught her peripheral vision, right side. She stared in disbelief. Her heart hammered. “Alice?” she whispered. “Look toward your right, out that window,” she pointed. “And tell me what you see.”

Alice looked. Sucked in her breath. She stared in horror. “That’s ... oh, my God! That’s the Moore girl.” Her voice was just audible.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” Emily blinked. The figure would not go away.

“I’m going to close my eyes,” Alice said. “And when I open, them, that . . . thing is going to be gone. I just know it.”

She closed her eyes. Opened them. Denise stood not far from the shack.

Both women stood in shock, staring out into the clearing.

A word drifted to the women. But neither could make it out.

“Did you say something, Emily?”

“No. I thought it was you. It was you, wasn’t it, Alice?”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Calm down. We’re hallucinating, that’s all. Let’s close our eyes and take several deep breaths.”

That done, the women opened their eyes. Denise was closer to the shack.

“NoNoNoNoNoNo!” Alice said. “This is not possible.”

The naked, torn, ghostly pale body of Denise gleamed brightly in the sun. She stood in the clearing, looking at the shack, a cat sitting on the ground beside her. She slowly lifted one arm and motioned at the shack. She spoke, the words very clear now.