Lucky's Girl (42 page)

The Faithless fought the Faithful to get away from Grove Island. Blackie and the four remaining male wolves of the Pack sprang at Lucky and Jenny, and the four remaining Most Faithful sprang back. No matter that the fight was hopelessly in favor of the Most Faithful, people stampeded in mindless animal terror to get away from the unearthly fury of wolf versus that which was neither wolf nor human.

In the unbelievable black of real Darkness, human trampled human, scratching, flailing, screaming and biting to get away.

The explosion flashed white-hot, and even Darkness and Silence couldn’t deaden it. The shockwave channeled out from the tributary, sending those fleeing and those restraining cartwheeling. In the nearby towns a booming echo and a white flash rolled across the night sky. The Paint River was normally a calm and meandering thing, in most places fairly shallow, but water, gravity and momentum are some of the most powerful forces in nature. Those people who had just been sent flying by the shockwave were hit by a solid wall of water released by the shattering of the dam.

The effects of the shockwave were no different on Grove Island. Everyone went flying, and that was the only thing which saved Blackie’s life. Her four males had died within seconds, torn apart by impossible fangs and claws. Her own death was upon her but just then everything went flying. She was able to get to her feet and run, keeping going until she couldn’t run anymore.

***

The wall of water ran fast and hard, knocking down those who had already gotten to their feet and who were lifting those who were still down, bouncing and bashing against the bottom. Some were unconscious, too weak to protect themselves. To many the cold water was a comfort, an end to fears unnatural. They let themselves go, just as Lucky had told them to.

As the water encircled Grove Island, however, an explosion in reverse took place. The deadening blanket of Darkness and Silence had been cut from its source. The ancient wives’ tale that malign spirits could not cross water had a basis in truth. To ears used to Silence and eyes accustomed to Darkness, their instant absence was overwhelming. The world is a loud and bright place.

The severance of Darkness and Silence wasn’t the only disconnection. The Faithful woke from their walking hypnosis, the past days being replayed in an avalanche of disgusting and degrading images. It brought more than revulsion. It was rape. Images of fucking and getting fucked. And then it became worse. They’d killed and reveled in it. They were plastered in shit, and they’d done it to themselves. They screamed and clutched themselves, the avalanche of water washing away the filth, but not the trauma and shame.

The Most Faithful fell to the ground thrashing as the power of the Big Tree, the power of the Wendigo, became severed from its source in the Outer Dark. They thrashed and convulsed as an iris in each eye closed forever. They’d been the vessels for the Wendigo to taste and smell and see, to experience the world of man and now he was gone, but they were not. Their human minds erased, they were raging abominations in a world they didn’t belong to. Mindless, soulless vehicles for carnage and rage, nothing else. They continued to thrash as the soul of the Wendigo left them, but their convulsions were slowing.

***

Jake worked himself free of the bonds tying his hands. The people who’d knotted them had been vacant at best. He was lying on his side, with the one named Jerry next to him. Jerry’s bulletproof vest had gone as well as his shirt buttons, exposing the awful meaty wound on his chest. He looked bad, and he wasn’t breathing right.

Jake sat up, seeing Errol on the other side of Jerry. He was unconscious, his face smushed, and his lips torn, exposing a rack of broken, bleeding teeth and gums. There was a big dent in his forehead where the bars had hit him. The bone could be seen beneath. The other guy, Frankie, hadn’t made it. He was lying next to Errol, but his head wasn’t connected. It was lying on his chest.

All around the island people were screaming in the water. He hadn’t seen the water come in after the explosion, but he’d heard it after his ears had stopped ringing. The wolves and the Most Faithful had started fighting, and the normal people fought the Faithful to get away, then the bomb had gone off and everybody had gotten tossed around like sacks of potatoes.

He couldn’t help it – he’d laughed. All those retards had deserved it.

Then the water had poured in, wiping out everyone on the lake bed. They’d already been knocked down by the bomb, and then the water had hit them. Now they were screaming like crazy people, not for help, just screaming and babbling like retarded kids.

Good. That’s what you deserve for smearing poop all over yourself.

Then he turned back towards the Big Tree. Jenny was looking straight at him, but simultaneously
not
looking at him. She’d wrapped her arms around her legs and was rocking. Disassociating. That’s what the shrinks called it. She’d started doing that after the gangbangers had raped her in Houston. When that happened he was supposed to take her to a safe place, talk to her, and tell her it was gonna be okay.

But things weren’t looking so good. He wasn’t sure if things were ever gonna be all right. For some reason, it looked like Lucky no longer had any control over the Most Faithful, and Lucky was having some problems of his own.

***

Lucky was fighting it but, for the first time in his adult life, his will was failing. The animal within was winning, the animal which had been born the day he’d first been called by the Big Tree was breaking free. It had been a part of him, a shadow of the Wendigo’s strength, shaping and guiding him, but since he’d returned to Elton it had become more than a mere shadow. It had moved beneath his skin, and his lust had become more than a thing of sweat, saliva, and cum.

He smelled blood coursing through veins, felt the texture of meat and bone. He thrilled to release it, to fall back into a carnal bliss of tearing and biting, fucking and killing. But this time he would release it with careful control. To be able to become a man again, to know the life of flesh but be able to return to the mind.

For centuries, the waters of Lake Elton had kept the strength of the Wendigo in check. When it had gone and the wolves had returned to the forests, all that was missing was the holy man to speak the words, to bring the Tribe, to make sacrifice of man and animal, to make an animal of man. But with that power gone, the animal inside broke free.

His will was insufficient.

No words could restrain it.

There would be no going back.

The shift began, and he screamed.

***

Kenny crawled on bloody hands and knees, deaf and half blind. The acetylene trick had worked a lot better than he’d anticipated. The interior of the truck had allowed the gas to expand to just the right density. He was pretty sure the truck had ceased to exist. The insurance company would not be amused. He laughed, could see his wife’s face, lecturing about this or that rate, then smiling and kissing him. Those things were her department. He was clueless when it came to that stuff.

His laughter stopped when he realized where he was. He was in the Rev’s,
Lucky’s
,
backyard. There was a shit-freak sitting on the balcony, not moving at all.

Then he realized, even with his explosion-flashed vision, that he could see better than before. The abnormal Darkness had gone. His Hail Mary had worked in more ways than he’d actually intended. Jake had told them of the crazy vision that Lucky had given them, of American Indians restraining whatever-it-was by digging a channel around Grove Island.

It was the only idea he’d had and, if nothing else, filling Elton Lake by setting off a car bomb would alert the neighboring towns that something was terribly amiss in Elton Township. Plus it would slow down Lucky’s cult to take a rowboat to visit their holy of holies.

Kenny took a deep breath and stood, working his jaw. His ears were ringing, that was a good sign at least. There were spots and blotches in his vision, and the shit-freak on the balcony hadn’t gotten up to intercept him. He was just sitting there like he’d seen a ghost.

He walked across the backyard to the balcony. Shit-man wasn’t even looking at him. Maybe he’d gone deaf and blind too.

Kenny spoke but the sound barely registered in his own ears. “Hey, shithead… you okay?”

Shit-man looked at his hand, and up his arm. He looked up to Kenny in pure confused terror, and it wasn’t hard to read the man’s lips.

“What the fuck happened?”

Kenny shook his head, smiling as best as he could. He pointed. “The garden hose is over there.”

Tears filled the man’s eyes. “I think… I think… someone did this to me.”

Kenny nodded. “Yeah, someone did.”

He turned and walked, then ran, back into town.

***

Jerry looked to his left at Errol. The poor man was conscious, to the extent that he could be. For him, everything must be a blur of rending agony. His frame had been shattered, and he didn’t have much time left. And it was going to hurt more than he could describe.

For Jerry, everything hurt, badly, but even the torn skin and muscle of his chest wasn’t the issue. The showstopper was his heart. It was flopping and skipping like a run-over cat with a broken neck. Doc Pete had been right about a lot of things.

Kenny’s boy Jake sat next to him, shaking off his daze, slipping the bonds from his wrists. He got out of them then worked on his ankles.

“Can you get up? My sister’s
gone
. I need to get her outta here now.”

Jerry looked around. The
things
, the Most Faithful, were writhing around on the ground like they’d been electrocuted.

Jake managed to get his legs free, then got to work on Jerry’s wrists. “Can you help or not? The Most Faithful are coming round and Lucky’s not Lucky anymore.”

He motioned with his head to another figure twisting like a worm under a magnifying glass. It was Lucky all right, but it looked like he was becoming just like his minions.

Then he realized he could completely see and hear again. The Darkness and Silence had gone. “Yeah kid, I’ll try. No guarantees. What the fucking fuck happened?”

Jake finished with Jerry’s wrists then worked on his ankles, pausing. A smile formed on his face. “My dad. He blew up the dam. He took away Lucky’s power.”

He started working again. “He saved us. Now we gotta save ourselves.”

***

Kenny rounded the bend onto the church grounds. As he passed the big front door he got a look at Elton, a scene from Hell right here on earth. Lake Elton was full of bodies, churning with people trying to swim. Knocking out the dam had blown them off their feet, and the Faithful had been released from Lucky’s hypnosis once Grove Island had been surrounded by water. They’d struggled when that had happened – they hadn’t been prepared for it.

Screaming and thrashing, crying out in their terror and confusion.

Some were on the shore trying to pull people out, but the former Faithful weren’t easy to help. They were thrashing around, screaming and crying out to God to explain what had happened to them. But it wasn’t God who had done this to them, at least not the God they’d been brought up with.

The church parking lot was full of cars. Kenny ran to one facing the lake, smashing the window with a rock and turning on the headlights. He then repeated the act with another car, and yet another. Now there was light but it didn’t make the situation any less chaotic. Kenny desperately scanned the water for his kids, screaming over and over.

Jake.

Jenny

Jake

Jenny

***

Jerry was on his feet but things were going from bad to worse. His left arm was numb, while it felt like an iron balloon was inflating in his chest, getting bigger with every step. The vision in his left eye filled with sparks.

They’d strapped Jenny to his back with his and Errol’s belts.

“Jake, you’re gonna have to guide me – it’s gonna get rough. I’m pretty sure I’m having a heart attack, so this might be a one-way trip.”

Jake’s eyes went wide. “Can you make it across?”

Jerry coughed. It hurt. “Let’s do it before those fucking things wake up.”

Already the Most Faithful were crawling around, groaning sickly, but the groans were growing angrier and crazier. Lucky was also up, his face elongated, wolf-like and cruel but still recognizably Lucky. He was beginning to move around as well.

Jerry held Jake’s hand and walked down to the water. It was icy and black, churning with the flopping and screaming. The frigid water sent rusty jitters up his spindly legs and into his guts and chest. There they blossomed into barbed wire stabbings.

Jake squeezed his hand. “Jerry, you’re not breathin’. Keep breathin’.”

Jerry stammered as the water rose to his balls. “Yeah, it’s just a little cold.”

Jake was in past his head and started treading water and dog paddling. “You can do it.”

Jerry didn’t think so. He was pretty sure he was gonna croak halfway across.

He failed to notice what was stalking up behind him.

***

Errol raised his head. It hurt like hell but it was enough to see what was about to happen. Those
things
were following Jerry. He was carrying Kenny’s little girl on his back.

He didn’t understand how, but something had rained a shitstorm on Lucky’s parade.

Now Lucky was just like his wolf-monster minions. He and the other four things were on the shore looking down at Jerry and the kids.

Then they tentatively started down the slope.

Errol screamed. “Hey, Lucky!”

The Lucky thing paused, looking around.

It knew it was Lucky.

“Yeah you, you fucking cunt faggot punk!”

Lucky saw him, recognition filling his eyes.

“Yeah, that’s right, you remember me don’t’cha?”

The Lucky thing kept looking back to Jerry and the kids.

“Your dad died ashamed of you, Lucky. When we told him what kind of a sick fuck you are, he cried. It was my idea to tell him. Jerry didn’t want to but I insisted.”