The Influence(100)

He could tell from their grimaces that Lita and Dave were both as repelled by the sensation of walking over the flowers as he was, but they made it to the car, put their suitcase and toiletries in the trunk, and got in, Dave riding shotgun, Lita in the back. No one said a word as Ross started the engine and circled around the head of the drive before setting out for the road, rolling over the densely growing flowers. He half-expected to hear screaming, cries of pain as the plants were crushed beneath the wheels, but there was only that maddening song, only the whistling, and luckily the closed windows and the sound of the car’s engine kept its intrusiveness to a minimum.

He drove slowly at first, almost gingerly, as though the tires were going over glass or nails and might pop at any second, but gradually he grew used to the sensation, and while he couldn’t see the road, he knew where it was, and by the time they approached the downtown, the car was humming along at a good forty miles an hour.

There were no red flowers here. He was not sure where they had stopped, if they had gradually thinned out or if there’d been a line of demarcation, but by the time they passed the empty beauty salon, the road was clear. And not just the road. The yards, the vacant lots, the open areas of dirt were all free from those terrible blooms.

Maybe, he thought, the further they moved away from Holt’s ranch and the monster in the smokehouse, the fewer the flowers. But Jill’s house was on the other side of the town, past this point, and she said that the plants had popped up in her area, so obviously that theory was completely wrong.

It didn’t make any sense.

None of this made any sense.

Looking to the right before turning left onto the main street, he saw that the chimney-shaped mountain, the one with the M, was almost entirely red.

Jill had said that she’d meet them at the gas station in a half-hour. It had already been twenty minutes, but when Ross drove into the grocery store parking lot, there was no sign of her. He glanced down at the gas gauge. He had a third of a tank, enough to get them to Willcox, maybe Deming, but definitely not as far as Las Cruces. Pulling next to one of the two pumps, he decided to fill up for the trip while waiting for Jill to arrive. There was no one in the cashier’s booth, however, and the pumps were so old that they had no automated card readers, so he could not charge the purchase. He was about to go into the store to find out if someone could help him, when he noticed a crowd gathering in the street.

And coming toward the gas station.

He probably shouldn’t have been as concerned as he was; for all he knew, they were also worried about what was happening and were coming over in an effort to find some answers. But his gut told him something different, and he backed against the car, opening the driver’s door, ready at a second’s notice to get in and take off.

A good twenty people, mostly men but several women as well, were approaching the parking lot from the direction of the church. Others were emerging from buildings along the way to join the crowd.

Where the hell was Jill?

“That’s Vern,” Dave announced from within the car.

“It is!” Lita said.

“Who’s— ” Ross began.

“The one with the knife.”

In the front line of the advancing crowd, a hard-looking, hatchet-faced man was holding a long knife in his right hand. Ross got quickly back into the car, locking the door and turning on the engine.

Goddamn it, Jill!

The group of locals, now numbering closer to thirty, stopped to the left of the car, next to the cashier’s booth. Ross scanned the gathering for other weapons—in his mind, the Magdalenans were horrorshow villagers carrying rifles, pitchforks, shovels, ropes, staffs—but Vern’s knife seemed to be the only one in evidence.

“I think we’d better go,” Dave said.

Ross nodded, but made no effort to leave. He was waiting for Jill, and while she was no doubt smart enough to find them if they waited by the side of the road outside of town, he was worried that something might have happened and that he might need to go after her. He considered calling her cell, but at the moment driving might require her full attention. Besides, cell phones usually didn’t work around here these days.

He looked to the left.

The crowd was getting ugly.

So to speak.

For some of the people in the rear of the crowd seemed to have…changed. The individuals were moving, shifting, but here he saw a pig nose, there some teeth that looked like tusks. Overlarge eyes bored into him from within a face covered by far too much hair.

It was not only the people in the back, though. Ben Stanard, the old man from the market, was now not so old. He was meaner looking than he had been before, but appeared years younger. And the big-breasted bimbo married to the internet guy was no longer so big-breasted. Her formerly pretty face was haggard and drawn, and her chest was as flat as a boy’s. She was standing not next to her husband but next to the mushroom lady from the farmer’s market, whose red face was twisted with rage.