He jumped at the sound of gunfire, and saw Raul and Todd firing again at what was left of the bear. The other men—Garth, Christian, Antonio and Isaiah—moved into position and started shooting as well until there was nothing left of the bear but chunks of hairy flesh and bone. The men remained tense, weapons at the ready, prepared for one or more of the other animals to take the bear’s place, but the beasts remained where they were.
‘‘Let’s go!’’ Todd yelled, motioning for everyone to follow him down the—
yellow brick road
—path, and the rest of them hurried past the remains of the bear before the other dead animals got their marching orders.
They rushed between two identical yellow trees that reminded him of something he’d seen in a book as a child—
Go, Dog. Go!
—and stopped.
They’d reached their destination.
They emerged from the trees into the open. The Black Mountain loomed before them, not part of a range but alone, rising above the land like an angry god, massive and implacable. Brian stared up at it. What was it made out of, he wondered? It didn’t look like rock, exactly, but neither did it appear to be dirt or sand. What it resembled most was rot or mold, and though he couldn’t be sure without getting closer, he thought that it might be nothing more than a gigantic compost pile, reaching its current height only after hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of accretion.
At the foot of the mountain was the village. Although it was more than that. And less. Dotting the sloping ground were huts of the kind they had entered earlier, dozens of them by his count. These structures had neither doors nor windows, though, and in the adobe with which they’d been constructed he could see large pieces of bone and skull. They were not arranged in any kind of order but appeared to have been set down at random amid a land littered with holes that looked not dug but blasted.
What is in those buildings?
Brian wondered. He thought of what had happened when they’d entered the adobe hut on the ridge and saw them not as homes but little powerhouses, energy sources that could be tapped by the monsters that lived here.
And there
were
monsters.
They were all over the place, standing for the most part, doing nothing, as though waiting for something to happen or someone to tell them what to do. A few wandered aimlessly about, but they weren’t behaving like actual villagers: mingling, working, performing tasks. This was their home, he was sure of it, but they seemed to have no real need for community, and where they actually slept—or
whether
they slept—he had no idea. He would not have been surprised to learn that they lived in the holes rather than the buildings or that they simply stood about like this all day long. He looked from one to another, noting the differences in their horrific forms.
All of the females were sexy.
It was not something he had expected or that he would have even believed before this moment. Their faces were indeed monstrous to behold, no two of them the same. Some had big eyes; some had small eyes. Some had noses; some had snouts; some had slits. The shape of the mouths varied, but all seemed to be possessed of the same small sharp teeth.
The bodies were uniform only in their height. They were all nearly as tall as the grizzly. But a multitude of body types were on display: thin, fat, long arms, short arms, clawed hands, fingers, cloven hooves, toes, tails, horns, even antlers. The various figures were covered with a jumble of hair, fur, scales and skin that could be either snake-slick shiny or rough and dull like rhinoceros hide.
Yet they were sexy.
He could not explain it, but as he watched, one of the females closest to them, her pubic area smooth and hairless, her single breast furry, began to sway and dance in place like some primitive stripper, and he was filled with a lust like he had never known. The other men felt it, too. He could see it in the way they stared at the monster and then tried to look away, pressing down on the growing bulges in their pants. He glanced over at Carrie and saw that she had her eyes on one of the males, watching as it stroked its enormous slimy penis and grinned at her.
Brian forced himself to take his eyes off the dancer and saw that the other creatures in the village no longer seemed so aimless or inactive. The monsters had moved closer and were watching their little group carefully, like people trying to circle in and trap an escaped pet. The male and female were distractions, their seductive movements an attempt to keep attentions away from the encroaching horde. He counted eight already that were within easy striking distance, and the expressions on their horrible faces were sly and crafty.
There were piles of human remains on the ground, he saw now, half-eaten carcasses and bones that were not the clean white of movie skeletons but yellowed and dirty, many of them with pieces of rotten flesh still clinging to them.
He yanked Carrie’s arm to get her attention and shouted, ‘‘Todd! Guys!’’
At once they were on alert again and, almost as though it hadn’t happened, the monsters in the village were standing dumbly about, staring at nothing, shambling around.
But they were closer.
The female was still swaying to unheard music, the male was still stroking his oversized organ.
‘‘They’re trying to hypnotize us!’’ Brian said. ‘‘I saw the rest of them moving closer while we were distracted by those two!’’ He pointed.
‘‘What should we do?’’ Todd asked, and once again Brian was filled with gratitude that the man was not so gung ho as to follow Kirk’s orders to the letter.
A trail of green—either moss or grass—led between the huts and up the Black Mountain. He could see, in the quickly fading light, where the solid emerald ribbon turned into a multicolored tapestry of the most vibrant hues imaginable. More monsters were coming down from the mountain along that trail, moving from half-lightinto shadow, having not gotten the message to play possum, and Brian knew that they would have to act fast.
‘‘I want to find my dad,’’ he said.
Todd nodded. ‘‘Lights on!’’ he ordered.
The mercenaries switched on their portable searchlights, and the area in front of them was illuminated almost as brightly as day. Brian would have expected the creatures to shy away from the light, like vampires avoiding a cross, but they didn’t seem to mind, didn’t even seem to notice, and he grimaced as he saw how truly ugly they were in the bright halogen beams. One of them with horns and a tail looked almost exactly like the traditional conception of the devil, and it stared at him with beetle-browed eyes and grinned knowingly until he was forced to turn away.
Back in Carrie’s pleasant kitchen, over iced tea and tacos, the idea that these beings were like some sort of endangered species of animal seemed a reasonable assumption. In that environment, under those circumstances, many of the harsher truths got stripped away. But Native Americans had considered these creatures demons, and for the first time Brian understood why. Because it was not some fundamental incompatibility between their genes and those of humans that had caused members of the moneyed elite to go on psychotic rampages. Such a predilection was a part of the very nature of these things. Coexisting with their enticing sexuality was a wild need for violence that was visible on every face and that could be described only as evil.
‘‘Look,’’ Isaiah said. ‘‘Over there.’’
Brian looked at where the man was shining his light. It was an adobe building much bigger than the others, and Brian couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before. It was to their right, away from the other huts and just inside the line of trees. It also had a doorway, and when he said, ‘‘Let’s check it out,’’ Todd snapped his fingers, made a few hand gestures, and he and Carrie were once again ensconced in that presidential security detail as their whole party made its way toward the building.
The smell hit them even before they reached the structure, a sickening stench of rotted food and feces. They were all breathing through their mouths, trying not to gag, and Todd stood several yards back from the entrance and shone his light into the open doorway. Inside were what looked like crudely constructed pens, and Brian was reminded of Lew Haskell’s barn. Indeed, a bed of straw could be seen in the closest pen, and lying on that straw was a person.
A human being.
Brian glanced up the slope, and though it was getting so dark that it was hard to see without the aid of the lights, it appeared as though the monsters were hanging back, staying away.
He turned his attention back to the building.
‘‘Come out!’’ Todd announced in his loudest, most authoritative voice.
The person on the straw stood and faced them, squinting against the bright light and trying to wave it away.
‘‘Go in there and bring them out,’’ Todd ordered Garth and Christian. ‘‘Him and anyone else you can find.’’
‘‘Jesus,’’ Garth breathed, taking a deep breath and trying to hold it. The two of them rushed in, weapons at the ready, and emerged a moment later with the man from the first pen. They went back in, came out with another man. And did it again. And again.
Finally, there were twelve of them lined up outside the building, all with lights and guns trained on them. Christian was off to the side, puking in the grass, and Brian didn’t blame him. Even this far away, the stench was nearly overpowering.
An old man with tangled gray hair and a massive matted beard, wearing filthy, raggedy clothes, separated himself from the others. He staggered when he walked, and looked up at an odd angle so as not to be blinded by the lights. The man was sinewy and stoop-shouldered, and though he couldn’t see it beneath the dirt and hair and years, Brian knew instantly and instinctively that this was his dad.
Next to his father stood another man, and he too came forward, although he quickly held up his hands in surrender and ran to Todd. He didn’t appear to be in as bad a shape as the others, and his clothes, while a little dirty, looked fairly new. ‘‘My name’s Andrew,’’ he said in a voice that threatened to break down into tears at every syllable. ‘‘Andrew Bledsoe. I’m vacationing with my family in Oak Draw. I don’t . . . I don’t know why . . .’’ And then he did break down. Brian could tell that they were all wary of the man, unsure if he was a rescued prisoner or some sort of decoy, but he had no time to devote attention to that.
His dad stood before him.
As he stared at the wreck of a man, Brian remembered the last time he’d seen him, when his dad—hair short and neatly combed, buttoned down in his business suit—had given him a hug in front of the empty junior high school—
‘‘I love you, Brian.’’
—and then driven him to the printer to drop off the page dummies. He was filled with an overwhelming sadness as he thought of all those lost years, all the times he wished he could have talked to his father and asked his advice but had had to make do with a memory and a hypothetical what-would-Dad-do?
Had his father missed him? Or his mom? Or his sister? He looked into that wrinkled, dirty face, those blank, unreadable eyes, and as much as he wanted to believe that their abandoned family had never been far from the old man’s thoughts, he could not make himself buy it.
Brian walked forward slowly, and the others walked with him, Carrie holding tightly to his arm, two of the men shining their lights, two stepping forward with their guns raised and ready. Only Todd remained in place, speaking to the man who’d called himself Andrew.
‘‘Dad?’’ After all these years, it felt strange actually using that word to address someone, and Brian choked up as he did so. He cleared his throat. ‘‘It’s me. Brian.’’
The old man said nothing, but he saw recognition in those eyes, a softening, and for the first time there seemed something familiar beneath all of the hair and grime. Brian quickened his pace, arms extended, ready to embrace his dad and—
‘‘He has a knife!’’ Carrie screamed.
Before the team could even raise their weapons, Brian was jumping in front of his father, waving his hands wildly. ‘‘Wait! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’’ He turned around to face his dad, and there was indeed a knife in his right hand, an intricately carved blade that looked like it had been made from bone. That hand was gripping the blade so tightly the filthy skin was almost as white as the blade, and the expression on the old man’s face was one of shame and despair.
‘‘Don’t, Dad,’’ Brian said softly.
His father looked at him, tried to speak, but managed only an incoherent croak.
‘‘I got your letter. You said, ‘Stop me.’ That’s what I’m trying to do.’’
‘‘Stop me,’’ he repeated awkwardly.
‘‘I miss you, Dad. We all do.’’ Brian took a step forward. He heard clicks and rattles as the men behind him retrained their weapons. ‘‘Don’t do this. Please. You don’t have to do this.’’
‘‘I do.’’
‘‘No.’’ Brian was still walking forward, hands extended.
‘‘She’s . . . my . . . wife,’’ he got out.
‘‘What about Mom? What about me? What about Jillian?’’
The old man’s grip on the knife loosened, and Brian took the last step forward and gently removed it from his hand. The moment he did so, there was a shiver in the ground beneath their feet, and puffs of foul-smelling dust flew up from the holes in the earth as though the land itself had exhaled. He didn’t know how it had happened, but the monsters were suddenly everywhere, taking a much more threatening stance, and there were cries in an alien language, strange mewling and odd whistles, followed by screams so harsh and dissonant that it hurt their ears. Vegetation was growing wildly all about, dark, menacing plants that threatened to cut them off from everything around them. Vines whipped around crazily like hyperkinetic snakes, and flowers with mouths, like bastard hybrids of Venus flytraps and the monster plant from
Little Shop of Horrors
, pushed up from the dirt and wiggled their way into the world.