Phantoms Part 9

"What happened?"

"Ssshh!" Jenny said. "Listen!"

But there was only continued silence.

The wind had stopped blowing, as if startled by the town's abrupt blackout. The trees waited, boughs hanging as still as old clothes in a closet.

Thank G.o.d for the moon, Jenny thought.

Heart thudding, Jenny turned and studied the buildings behind them. The town jail. A small cafe. The shops. The townhouses.

All the doorways were so clotted with shadows that it was difficult to tell if the doors were open or closed-or if, just now, they were slowly, slowly coming open to release the hideous, swollen, demonically reanimated dead into the night streets.

Stop it! Jenny thought. The dead don't come back to life.

Her eyes came to rest on the gate in front of the covered serviceway between the sheriff's substation and the gift shop next door. It was exactly like the cramped, gloomy pa.s.sageway beside Liebermann's Bakery.

Was something hiding in this tunnel, too? And, with the lights out, was it creeping inexorably toward the far side of the gate, eager to come out onto the dark sidewalk?

That primitive fear again.

That sense of evil.

That superst.i.tious terror.

"Come on," she said to Lisa.

"Where?"

"In the street. Nothing can get us out there-"

"-without our seeing it coming," Lisa finished, understanding.

They went into the middle of the moonlit roadway.

"How long until the sheriff gets here?" Lisa asked.

"At least fifteen or twenty minutes yet."

The town's lights all came on at once. A brilliant shower of electric radiance stung their eyes with surprise-then darkness again.

Jenny raised the pistol, not knowing where to point it.

Her throat was fear-parched, her mouth dry.

A blast of sound-an unG.o.dly wail-slammed through Snowfield.

Jenny and Lisa both cried out in shock and turned, b.u.mping against each other, squinting at the moon-tinted darkness.

Then silence.

Then another shriek.

Silence.

"What?" Lisa asked.

"The firehouse!"

It came again: a short burst of the piercing siren from the east side of St. Moritz Way, from the Snowfield Volunteer Fire Company stationhouse.

Bong!

Jenny jumped again, twisted around.

Bong! Bong!

"A church bell," Lisa said.

"The Catholic church, west on Vail."

The bell tolled once more-a loud, deep, mournful sound that reverberated in the blank windows along the dark length of Skyline Road and in other, unseen windows throughout the dead town.

"Someone has to pull a rope to ring a bell," Lisa said. "Or push a b.u.t.ton to set off a siren. So there must be someone else here besides us."

Jenny said nothing.

The siren sounded again, whooped and then died, whooped and died, and the church bell began to toll again, and the bell and the siren cried out at the same time, again and again, as if announcing the advent of someone of tremendous importance.

In the mountains, a mile from the turnoff to Snowfield, the night landscape was rendered solely in black and moon-silver. The looming trees were not green at all; they were somber shapes, mostly shadows, with albescent fringes of vaguely defined needles and leaves.

In contrast, the shoulders of the highway were blood-colored by the light that splashed from the revolving beacons atop the three Ford sedans which all bore the insignia of the Santa Mira County Sheriff's Department on the front doors.

Deputy Frank Autry was driving the second car, and Deputy Stu Wargle was slouched down on the pa.s.senger's seat.

Frank Autry was lean, sinewy, with neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair. His features were sharp and economical, as if G.o.d hadn't been in the mood to waste anything the day that He had edited Frank's genetic file: hazel eyes under a finely chiseled brow; a narrow, patrician nose; a mouth that was neither too parsimonious nor too generous; small, nearly lobe-less ears tucked flat against the head. His mustache was most carefully groomed.

He wore his uniform precisely the way the service manual said he should: black boots polished to a mirrored s.h.i.+ne, brown slacks with a knife-edge crease, leather belt and holster kept bright and supple with lanolin, brown s.h.i.+rt crisp and fresh.

"It isn't f.u.c.king fair," Stu Wargle said.

"Commanding officers don't always have to be fair-just right," Frank said.

"What commanding officer?" Wargle asked querulously.

"Sheriff Hammond. Isn't that who you mean?"

"I don't think of him as no commanding officer."

"Well, that's what he is," Frank said.

"He'd like to break my a.s.s," Wargle said. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Frank said nothing.

Before signing up with the county constabulary, Frank Autry had been a career military officer. He had retired from the United States Army at the age of forty-six, after twenty-eight years of distinguished service, and had moved back to Santa Mira, the town in which he'd been born and raised. He had intended to open a small business of some kind in order to supplement his pension and to keep himself occupied, but he hadn't been able to find anything that looked interesting. Gradually, he had come to realize that, for him at least, a job without a uniform and without a chain of command and without an element of physical risk and without a sense of public service was just not a job worth having. Five years ago, at the age of forty-eight, he had signed up with the sheriff's department, and in spite of the demotion from major, which was the rank he'd held in the service, he had been happy ever since.

That is, he had been happy except for those occasions, usually one week a month, when he'd been partnered with Stu Wargle. Wargle was insufferable. Frank tolerated the man only as a test of his own self-discipline.

Wargle was a slob. His hair often needed was.h.i.+ng. He always missed a patch of bristles when he shaved. His uniform was wrinkled, and his boots were never s.h.i.+ned. He was too big in the gut, too big in the hips, too big in the b.u.t.t.

Wargle was a bore. He had absolutely no sense of humor. He read nothing, knew nothing-yet he had strong opinions about every current social and political issue.

Wargle was a creep. He was forty-five years old, and he still picked his nose in public. He belched and farted with aplomb.

Still slumped against the pa.s.senger-side door, Wargle said, "I'm supposed to go off duty at ten o'clock. Ten G.o.dd.a.m.ned o'clock! It's not fair for Hammond to pull me for this Snowfield c.r.a.p. And me with a hot number all lined up."

Frank didn't take the bait. He didn't ask who Wargle had a date with. He just drove the car and kept his eyes on the road and hoped that Wargle wouldn't tell him who this "hot number" was.

"She's a waitress over at Spanky's Diner," Wargle said. "Maybe you seen her. Blond broad. Name's Beatrice; they call her Bea."

"I seldom stop at Spanky's," Frank said.

"Oh. Well, she don't have a half-bad face, see. One h.e.l.l of a set of knockers. She's got a few extra pounds on her, not much, but she thinks she looks worse than she does. Insecurity, see? So if you play her right, if you kind of work on her doubts about herself, see, and then if you say you want her, anyway, in spite of the fact that she's let herself get a little pudgy-why, h.e.l.l, she'll do any d.a.m.ned thing you want. Anything."

The slob laughed as if he had said something unbearably funny.

Frank wanted to punch him in the face. Didn't.

Wargle was a woman-hater. He spoke of women as if they were members of another, lesser species. The idea of a man happily sharing his life and innermost thoughts with a woman, the idea that a woman could be loved, cherished, admired, respected, valued for her wisdom and insight and humor-that was an utterly alien concept to Stu Wargle.

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had been married to his lovely Ruth for twenty-six years. He adored her. Although he knew it was a selfish thought, he sometimes prayed that he would be the first to die, so that he wouldn't have to handle life without Ruth.

"That f.u.c.kin' Hammond wants my a.s.s nailed to a wall. He's always needling me."

"About what?"

"Everything. He don't like the way I keep my uniform. He don't like the way I write up my reports. He told me I should try to improve my att.i.tude. Christ, my att.i.tude! He wants my a.s.s, but he won't get it. I'll hang in five more years, see, so I can get my thirty-year pension. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d won't squeeze me out of my pension."

Almost two years ago, voters in the city of Santa Mira approved a ballot initiative that dissolved the metropolitan police, putting law enforcement for the city into the hands of the county sheriff's department. It was a vote of confidence in Bryce Hammond, who had built the county department, but one provision of the initiative required that no city officers lose their jobs or pensions because of the transfer of power. Thus, Bryce Hammond was stuck with Stewart Wargle.

They reached the Snowfield turnoff.

Frank glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the third patrol car pull out of the three-car train. As planned, it swung across the entrance to Snowfield road, setting up a blockade.

Sheriff Hammond's car continued on toward Snowfield, and Frank followed it.

"Why the h.e.l.l did we have to bring water?" Wargle asked.

Three five-gallon bottles of water stood on the floor in the back of the car.

Frank said, "The water in Snowfield might be contaminated."

"And all that food we loaded into the trunk?"

"We can't trust the food up there, either."

"I don't believe they're all dead."

"The sheriff couldn't raise Paul Henderson at the substation."

"So what? Henderson's a jerk-off."

"The doctor up there said Henderson's dead, along with-"

"Christ, the doctor's off her nut or drunk. Who the h.e.l.l would go to a woman doctor, anyway? She probably screwed her way through medical school."

"What?"

"No broad has what it takes to earn a degree like that!"

"Wargle, you never cease to amaze me."

"What's eating you?" Wargle asked.

"Nothing. Forget it."

Wargle belched. "Well, I don't believe they're all dead."

Another problem with Stu Wargle was that he didn't have any imagination.

"What a lot of c.r.a.p. And me lined up with a hot number."

Frank Autry, on the other hand, had a very good imagination. Perhaps too good. As he drove higher into the mountains, as he pa.s.sed a sign that read SNOWFIELD-3 MILES, his imagination was humming like a well-lubricated machine. He had the disturbing feeling-Premonition? Hunch?-that they were driving straight into h.e.l.l.

The firehouse siren screamed.

The church bell tolled faster, faster.

A deafening cacophony clattered through the town.

"Jenny!" Lisa shouted.

"Keep your eyes open! Look for movement!"

The street was a patchwork of ten thousand shadows; there were too many dark places to watch.

The siren wailed, and the bell rang, and now the lights began to flash again-house lights, shop lights, streetlights-on and off, on and off so rapidly that they created a strobelike effect. Skyline Road flickered; the buildings seemed to jump toward the street, then fall back, then jump forward; the shadows danced jerkily.