Lucky's Girl (35 page)

He felt it in the kitchen. He felt it in his bedroom.

He heard a moaning, a nauseous cracking and splintering, a sound like shitting and vomiting in reverse, a sound of women gagging and crying. And then the shadows came towards him, long and lithe, attached to human female forms. Naked human females. Ellen, Shelly, Abby, Jennifer and Marsha filed from his kitchen as naked as the day they’d been born, covered in a meaty glistening of bloody snot. Dripping in it, hair soaking with it.

And they smelled like it too.

Like when a sheep passes a ewe, wet with…

Most of the church choir was here in the living room, covered in afterbirth, completely naked, and they look really, really good. Twenty years younger, all the years, and weight and stretch marks, gone. Replaced by a youthful glow which was downright strong and fierce and hungry…

Starving.

Ravenous.

His rifle fell from his fingers, his left arm going numb. His breath wouldn’t come He felt his legs tingle and buckle just as Marsha and Jennifer grabbed his arms and held him upright with an almost impossible strength.

“Women aren’t that strong.”

They were the only words which came out. Confused and irrelevant in the face of what was unfolding before him. All around them, the Pack was assembling, Blackie’s eyes boring into him in unholy knowing.

Abby, Shelly and Ellen
bent
in some kind of seizure, like they were going to shit or give birth, with the same sounds from before; a wet splintering, a groaning, creaking and twisting of muscle, skin and bone. Faces became snouts while hair grew from skin, teeth changed shape and gums streamed with blood. But worst of all were the eyes. They weren’t the eyes of man or wolf or anything in between. Glowing grey with two irises, seeing through the meat and rot of this wretched mortal life from another world entirely.

Jennifer and Marsha tore open his shirt and pants like gauze in their terrible strength. Abby, Shelly and Ellen were before him on the floor, their transformations complete. They crawled forward, covered in fur, emaciated, skin stretched tight over muscle and bone, the transformation taking their very essence away with it. They were starving, they needed to feed, and now.

Abby stood while the other two crouched before his naked exposed body.

Ellen took his scrotum in her mouth, teeth piercing skin, opening the sack to fish the testicles out with her tongue. She spat them into her hand, still connected to the tubes.

Finally the agony ripped through his shock and Colson screamed, just in time for the Abby-wolf to open her jaws over his mouth and bite down, through teeth, tongue and bone. Ellen tore his cock away, handing it to Blackie.

Then the feeding began. Soon the screaming ended with a pitiful wet gurgle. Once the pack had finished, only shattered fragments of bone remained of Colson.

***

Throughout the streets and trails of Elton Township, lone men and women were walking as if in a dream. Their neighbors peeked out through the blinds at them then quickly hide lest they’d be caught looking. These lone walkers weren’t the people they used to be. They were naked and covered in filth, their eyes registering no recognition of the world around them. But the ones in hiding knew; these people might seem like they were sleepwalking, but they weren’t. They were watching and waiting, their senses guided by something else from beyond.

So they hid in silence, checking the locks on the doors and reloading their guns.

***

The day passed in Elton in absolute silence. Even those who hadn’t heard Fat Sally’s screams or the baying of man, wolf and the abominable mix of both knew that the Township of Elton was now lethal. The burnt out wreckage of Doc Pete’s car still sat on the side of the road, flipped over and impaled on a tree, the parking lot of the church still packed with cars which hadn’t moved in days.

If the unaware were to peer through the doors of the church they would see two hundred or more people, if that’s what they still were, tangled together. Some asleep, some catatonic, but all writhing and moaning to the familiar refrain of Their God, the Wendigo.

These people were no longer recognizable as their former selves. They were as man had been before he’d forged metal or had written words. Whatever distinction had existed between themselves and their animal natures had been rendered extinct. They’d daubed their bodies in mud and feces, and had woven their hair with twigs and leaves. They no longer saw themselves as distinct individuals, they owned no possessions, didn’t even own themselves. There was no husband or wife, no child or parent, no family but the Tribe, no law but nature, and the God of Nature, Their God, the Wendigo.

Lucky gazed down from the dais, in contemplation and meditation. So much had been done in so little time. His God had triumphed over the System. And the fulfillment of the Covenant now walked the earth, man and animal in one, with two irises in its eyes, one for the living, and one for the God to see the world through the eyes of his creation. Throughout his life he had torn down the boundaries between himself and others, himself and nature, and himself and His God. He hadn’t ever really understood what had driven him until now. The miracle, the truth lay all about him.

But still, work remained.

Jenny was lying before him, half asleep and half awake, her lithe body writhing in the power emanating from Grove Island. Her eyes fluttered open from time to time and her hand snaked up between his legs to his cock. She rose up to take him in her mouth but he gently pushed her away and promised, “Soon.”

But first they would be wed, and the last of His God’s promises would be fulfilled. Jerry, and Kenny, and Errol must witness this. They must see, and know that their injustice had failed.

***

Larry Torgeson punched the gas. Like most of the Michigan State Police cruisers, his Crown Vic had an Interceptor package and it really moved. He really liked the long stretches of road here in Iron County, where he could open it up to 120 and not see another person for an entire hour. Iron County was mostly very pretty but empty space.

Except for Elton Township.

Jesus Christ, what a fuckhole.

But whatever, he loved this drive, especially in late August when the leaves were turning. Just gorgeous. He’d forget the depressed economy and every other reason to not be a cop in Michigan, much less in the Upper Peninsula. Truth was, there was no good reason to be a cop here but he couldn’t have seen himself doing anything else. His dad had been a cop here. He felt the place down to his bones. This was his home. Yeah, it snowed more than anywhere in the whole country, and he’d shoveled a mountain of the white stuff in his time, but that’s who he was.

At least he wasn’t a cop in Detroit or Flint.

Fuck all that!

Which brought him back to Jerry, that pathetic waste of space. Washed out Detroit cop who’d shot a kid when he was drunk. It was no surprise the phone lines were down and that Jerry hadn’t bothered to send Mailman Errol or any of the other hayseeds to the next town to phone it in.

He was probably piss-drunk handing out DWI’s outside Frankie’s bar at eleven in the morning. Or masturbating. One or the other.

Maybe he’d stroked out for good and was dead in his cruiser. Larry smiled and shook his head.
Jerry Kaminsky
. Rumor had it Doc Pete had told him he was a walking aneurism, but he’d left the hospital anyways, rambling something about the evil son of the dead Rev, come to take over Elton. Why anybody would want to take over the hemorrhoid of the U.P. was anybody’s guess. Most likely alcoholic dementia on the part of one useless bag named
Jerry Kaminsky
.

Now, mind you, the only reason they knew the phone lines were down was somebody in Elton with a ham radio had contacted another person who in their turn had contacted the Staties, thus sending him on this little trip. Apparently the first guy with the radio had also requested the National Guard and the FBI because the evil son of the dead Rev had summoned the Devil out on Grove Island in the middle of the empty ass Lake Elton (Larry was actually sort of interested in seeing what that looked like) and had turned everyone into zombies.

Larry shook his head in agreement. He’d like to see what a lake looked like when drained, plus zombies would make an interesting day in law enforcement. Do you cuff zombies? Read them their rights? Maybe Bigfoot would show up too, and they’d all have a round at Frankie’s, paid for with someone’s welfare check.

CHAPTER 14

Kenny opened his eyes, smelling the blood all over him. It had stopped flowing when Jerry’s had friend stitched him up. It had been a day since he’d been dragged here, and jagged nails of fear were cutting through the hangover and the pain.

Lucky had Jenny and Jake, and it was all his fault. There had been a chain of events leading up to this. At every turn he’d been wrong, and now they were here. In Elton, in the hands of a sociopathic, charismatic cult leader.

He sat up, looking at Jerry dozing on the other bench. Jerry had bolted the front door, and sealed them in the cell with a small arsenal of shotguns and pistols, all locked and loaded. Last night, after the frenzied sounds from Grove Island, the phone lines had gone dead.

No word from Errol or Frankie either.

“Jerry, we can’t just sit here.”

Jerry rubbed his eyes and yawned, but with neither comfort nor contentment.

“This is the safest place…” he replied, stretching and sitting up, blinking at the dim lights. He continued. “They want us alive or we’d be dead. They can’t get us out of this cell. Not without a real fight.”

“Jerry, we’re barricaded in a cell. We’re right where he wants us. He has my kids.”

Jerry clenched his eyes shut. “And he knows there ain’t but four of us. And we don’t even know where Errol or Frankie are.”

Kenny exhaled hard in anger and frustration. “I know. But we can’t just sit here, waiting for whatever sick shit Lucky’s gonna pull. We gotta figure something out. We gotta
do
something.”

***

Errol and Frankie were sleeping at the little trailer about a kilometer further into the woods from the Grow. It was a bitch to get out here, but it had proven its utility. During the critical months of spring and summer Wally had practically lived here. It was completely hidden from the air by a canopy of specialized netting shielding it from physical and infrared observation.

They ate a breakfast of deer jerky and warm beer, then checked the video feed to see the lay of the land.

The trails leading to the crop were clear, but the network of little hidden cameras around the township of Elton were showing a different story.
Walkers
had the few remaining normal folks corralled inside their homes. Even in the grainy black and white images they saw they were naked, smeared with mud or shit, with leaves and sticks twisted into their hair. These folks were drinking the same Kool-Aid as Wally had been.

They switched the camera feed for a look at the church parking lot. Completely full, and rewinding the tape showed no one had left for a day now. What the hell was going on in there?

Elton was being patrolled by Lucky’s fucking psychos.

So Frankie and Errol had gone for the gear they’d never imagined ever using. Despite what they did for money, they weren’t that way. But all the rules had gone out the window in Elton Township.

It was a safe in the woods, an insurance policy and a last resort. They’d bought it and buried it, with four Krinkov AK-47 carbines and twenty magazines each. They’d also gotten four absurd looking Kevlar vests, with big collars to cover their necks, and flaps down past their balls.

When they’d acquired them, all four had gone way out into the woods to get a clear idea of what they were capable of. With folding stocks, and red dot sights, the rifles were brutal both up close and at a distance. But the very idea of using them was nauseating. Sure, going full auto on a pyramid of beer cans was really funny, they’d even tried fully auto skeet shooting one time, and that was hysterical, but turning them on people was not.

The guns felt alien and cold in their hands, otherworldly tools for other men to use. Evil men. Criminals.

Frankie gave Errol an empty look, Errol returned it.

Errol looked around at the woods, trying to get some confidence. “We’re gonna go get Sally, try to get Wally. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”

Frankie nodded. “Yeah. For Sally and Wally.”

***

Torgeson checked his radio and cell for the umpteenth time, hoping against hope for more than static or the little cellular dead-zone indicator known as Elton Township. He’d already known this would be the drill, but he’d checked and rechecked anyways. This shit was FUBAR, and he wanted to exhaust every angle before calling Jerry Kaminsky.

Jerry Kaminsky’s little town was full blown Twilight Zone right now.

Twenty minutes
to get out of the radio and cell dead-zone.

Going in excess of a hundred miles an hour.

He’d pulled off the highway onto the main thoroughfare into Elton Township and after a half-mile had come across the scorched remains of Doc Pete’s car.