Boys of Blur (18 page)

Mack crouched in the shadows next to the bleachers. Most of the fans were gone, and those who weren’t were tangled in the bleachers or sprawled on the ground.

An awful reek floated across the turf like cold air. When it reached him, Mack’s skin tightened and disgust washed through him. This stupid town and all its petty people deserved everything they were getting. Disgust boiled toward anger, but Mack was already closing iron fists of self-control around the first surprise attack of feeling.

He’d had a lot of practice. This was game time, and he never played angry. When other men cracked, he was a rock. When opponents burned with fiery rage, Mack was
searing cold. He could find clarity and yawn calm even when a hundred thousand people were screaming at him and cameras were in his face, spying for tens of millions more.

Mack stayed focused.

The helicopter was hovering over the field, scanning it with its spotlight, which was pointless with the stadium lights on. A group of cops—traffic, state troopers, gang-unit guys in fatigues and flak jackets, maybe fifteen in all—had circled up with backs together on the far sideline. They were terrified and arguing, but one man in fatigues seemed to be in some sort of control, his dark shaved head glistening and his booming orders drowning out complaints and arguments.

Fast dark shapes with bare feet and fur hoods moved fluidly through the bleachers above the cops. More danced past them in the grass, reversing direction just before a gun fired, darting in and slashing at legs and tumbling away again.

Mack turned and looked toward the locker room. He hoped Steve still had the boys inside, and that they were all still sane.

A cold gun barrel tapped him on the back of the neck.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Spitz said behind him. “My night might look up after all.”

Mack rose slowly, hands up, and turned. Spitz looked
bad. His visor was gone and he had a lump on his forehead ready to hatch into something the size of a turkey. His nose was broken, and while the bleeding had stopped, it had already turned his mustache into a fat, hairy scab. His pants were torn and sagging.

“Leroy, what are you doing?” Mack said. He gestured at the group of cops near the bleachers. “Why aren’t you with them?”

“Them,” Spitz said. “Those fools. Hydrant is with them.
Them
is where every mindless numbskull like you should be. I’m with me.”

“Hiding under the bleachers?” Mack asked. “People need your help, Spitz.”

Spitz waggled his gun. “Oh, shut up. How many millions of dollars did you get to play football? How many parties and cars and houses?”

Mack didn’t answer.

“Know how many I got?” Spitz asked. “Zero. Zeeeer to the O. Want to explain to me how that’s fair?” He leaned forward, pressing the gun against Mack’s forehead. “You can’t, because it ain’t.”

Mack snatched the barrel, twisted the gun out of Spitz’s hand, and punched him in the stomach. The sheriff doubled over, gasping.

“You’re under … arrest.”

“Maybe later,” Mack said. He checked the revolver’s
chambers. Fully loaded. Mack gritted his teeth. Charlie had been here, and Mack wasn’t leaving until he was sure that Charlie wasn’t hunkered down hurt and hiding, or worse.

Mack crossed the sideline and angled toward the locker rooms behind the goalpost.

“Hey!” Spitz shrieked behind him. “Monsters! Here’s one! Get him!”

Charlie opened his eyes. Above him were the branches of scruffy trees. Fire glowed nearby. Mountains of smoke were crawling into the night sky, but the wind was bending it away, carrying it toward the sea. Charlie could see the moon. And stars.

He sat up slowly. He was very wet, and his head hurt. His leg was heavy and throbbing, especially his ankle. He was lying on the mound that bridged the canal and ran into the swamp. The red truck was upside down in the canal in front of him. Across the smoldering fields, he could see the church burning.

Charlie glanced down. He was sitting on the chalk stone.

He jerked away, scrambling off it like a crab. The stone had changed. It was all splinters. They were soft, breaking down to powder between his fingertips.

Under the trees, a small flame flicked to life. The man
from the truck was trying to light a cigarette. His face was wet. Long hair clung to his cheeks. The trucker cap was missing.

“Nice trick with the water.” He exhaled. “Enough bullets stop ’em, too. For a while.” He held up the lighter. “Hope you don’t mind. It was in your bag. You shouldn’t be smoking anyway.”

“It wasn’t for smoking,” Charlie said. “Who are you and what do you want?”

The man laughed. “Right to the point, even when the world’s trying to end. I like that.” He held up Charlie’s bag and dropped the lighter inside, then tossed it to him. Charlie caught it in his lap.

“I’m the man who just saved your life, Charlie.” He gave up on his cigarette and flicked it away. He smiled. “I’m your father, and don’t you forget it.”

Charlie stood with his back to a tree and his pack hanging in front of his chest. His eyes were sweeping the shadows under the trees for any sign of the panther. She kept disappearing and then reappearing to tug on Charlie’s shirt once she was certain of the trail. But this last time, she hadn’t returned.

There had been no sign or smell of any Gren.

Charlie’s mind was more crowded than it had ever been, more overloaded with worries and wonders and confusions than he had energy to think about. Cotton was dying. He had just met his father for the first time since his father had earned a trip to prison. But more importantly, Charlie wasn’t feeling well at all. His leg was throbbing up to the knee. He’d dry-heaved into the bushes. His eyes weren’t focusing.

Charlie didn’t have much time, and he knew it.

Bobby Reynolds, an older, thicker, lumpier-faced version of the man Charlie had once loved and feared, crashed through the brush, up to his knees in watery mud.

Animals were shrieking at Charlie from the leafy darkness above. Whatever they were, Charlie didn’t like them.

“Mound curls north,” Bobby said. “Joins one that shoots southwest. Hand me that map.”

Charlie passed over Cotton’s paper. Bobby used the lighter to look at it.

His father had only been interested in two things. First, helping his son and keeping him safe—especially if that meant putting down swamp monsters. And second, completely ignoring the past and acting like nothing had happened that he might need to address.

Charlie was glad. The last thing he wanted was a talk. A talk would tear things loose inside him he couldn’t deal with right now. On any other night, the idea of being alone with his father would have terrified him. Not tonight. Tonight, Bobby Reynolds was way down the list of scary things. For that, Charlie was grateful.

Charlie leaned his head against a tree trunk. He was feeling ill again.

“North,” his father grunted. He tucked the map into the pocket of his denim jacket. “At least if you want to follow these mounds to the middle.”

Charlie didn’t leave the support of his tree. He just held out his hand for the map.

“You don’t trust me,” his father said.

Charlie didn’t answer. He didn’t lower his hand.

“Right,” said Bobby Reynolds. “Old memories of good old dad, huh? Well, I spent the last couple days looking for you. I just killed—or rekilled—four of those things, and then I pulled you out from under my truck and saved your pasty hide. Now I’m taking you on your crazy swamp quest, and the last time I checked, Prester Mack isn’t here. So start trusting.”

He slapped the map into Charlie’s hand. Charlie followed him through the swamp slop, pushed through brush, and then once again found solid mound ground beneath his feet.

Something moved in the darkness ahead. Charlie’s father clamped his big hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“Panther,” Bobby whispered. He raised his rifle.

“Really?” Charlie shrugged out of his father’s grip and staggered forward. The panther was pacing—climbing a fallen tree, descending, dropping onto the narrow mound and sliding through brush, circling a small pool of black mud, hopping back onto the mound, climbing the tree, and back down again.

Moonlight trickled through the trees, but there was no way to recognize the panther for sure. Except that it hadn’t attacked them.

“She’s mine,” Charlie said, and as he moved forward, he understood her frustration. The mound was blocked with
a tangle of branches and trunks so tight that she couldn’t get through—so tight that it couldn’t be natural. It was like the wall of a stockade, but jumbled and jagged and leaning out over you when you got close to it.

Charlie held out his hand and let his fingers drag down the panther’s body as she passed. He shut his eyes and tried not to feel dizzy.

“We’re here,” he said. “But how do we get in?”

Charlie’s father stood beside him. “There’s a way. Over or under or through, they get in somehow.”

“No way they climb better than a panther,” Charlie said. “And she’s confused.” He thought about that Gren dragging Lio by the ankle, about that woman. They weren’t scrambling over walls like monkeys.

The Gren were connected to the muck. They were caked with it. Later on, if the Mother had her way, they would be dragging dozens of bodies back into this swamp. She would be birthing more sons. She had a front door somewhere. Charlie just needed to see one of the Gren use it. Then he would go in and pull his bone knife and … well, he didn’t want to think about that part.

Charlie dug into his bag and pulled out his air horn.

“Knock, knock,” he said. And he squeezed the trigger.

His father grabbed him from behind and tore the horn out of his hand. The enormous blast of sound died just as suddenly as it had begun. The panther was staring at him.

“Are you crazy?” his father hissed.

“Hopefully, a Stank will come from inside, not from behind us.” He pointed at the pool of mud. “I’m guessing right there. It looks just like they smell.”

His father handed back the air horn and raised his rifle. While they watched, it stirred.

Two huge hands reached up out of the goop and grabbed a log. Shadow raced toward them, clinging to the dripping arms. Head and shoulders followed, slick with muck, and blanketed with thickening darkness.

Charlie’s father fired, and the snarling panther leapt onto the Gren’s back before its ribs cleared the slop. Charlie sat down and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to watch, and he didn’t want to think about what came next. He was all the way up the high dive now, and there was no turning back.

“Charlie?” his father asked.

Charlie groaned, opened his eyes, and stood up.

“You don’t have to do this,” his father said. “I’ll take you back to your mother. Or you could just climb a tree with your panther and sleep.”

Charlie shook his head. “I do have to do this. If I don’t …”

“I have a gun. I’ll do it.”

Charlie limped over to the edge of the muck. The panther had dragged the Gren’s body to the other side of the mound and left it in a swamp puddle. It was only a few
inches deep. Not enough to keep him dead, but it was better than nothing.

“Charlie?”

Charlie looked at his father. Really looked. This was it. This could be his last chance to say what needed saying. His memories were roaring and tumbling and confused. The man was like an illustration from painful stories in his mind. It was strange that he was real. That he still existed after that final awful night.

Charlie blinked slowly. Bobby Reynolds. His dad. Standing in the moonlight next to him, pretending like they were friends, like they had always been on the same team.

“You were the monster,” Charlie said. “You hurt Mom. You hurt me. You hurt Sugar. You hurt Sugar’s mom.”

His father frowned. “I did my time,” he said. “I paid.”

“No, Dad.” Charlie shook his head. His body felt fuzzy, but his mind was hot and clear. “You didn’t. You owed us
you
. All of you. And you owed Sugar and Sugar’s mom. You belonged to us, but all you did was hate us for it.”

Charlie could see his father’s cheeks twitch. He had forgotten that they did that. He mostly remembered the eyes and the hands.