The Influence(118)

“Yeah.” He nodded, then frowned. “How’d you know that?”

“I saw it.”

“I wanted to go, too, but he said I should stay and take care of you, and of course he was right.” Dave’s frown deepened. “What do you mean, you saw it?”

“It was like a dream, I guess. But it wasn’t a dream. I saw things when I was knocked out.”

“Did you see anything useful?”

“Not really. I just saw things as they are. In real time, I think. But I remember them clearly, not like a dream, where, you know, it kind of gets fuzzy after you wake up and you start to forget.”

Dave sighed. “Even if you did see something Ross could use, there’s no way we could tell him about it anyway.”

“Cell phones don’t work in Magdalena,” they said together, and Lita laughed. His eyes filled with tears as he realized how wonderful it was to hear her laugh again.

“I love you,” he said.

She smiled at him, squeezed his hand. “I love you, too.”





THIRTY EIGHT




Hec arrived just as it started to snow. He came on foot, carrying a high-powered rifle and wearing a backpack that undoubtedly contained ammunition.

The clouds had sped in out of nowhere, in a matter of minutes, like something out of a Godfrey Reggio movie. They were white rather than gray, but they brought cold with them, and as soon as they settled into place, the snow began.

“Jackass told me whatcha wanna do,” Hec said without preamble. “I’m in.”

A burly guy with a thick lumberjack beard, he didn’t look like someone who had ever been in the military, let alone a sharpshooter, but looks could be deceiving, and Ross had no choice but to trust McDaniels on this.

“Basically, we need you for cover,” Ross said. “We’re going to try and destroy it by setting it on fire, but I understand that there are some people protecting it. That’s where you come in. I don’t want you to actually kill anyone, but I’m hoping you can keep people away from me and Kevin over there while we do what we have to do.” He glanced at his nephew, who seemed to be watching the farmer’s market girl and the balloon man at the end of the street, wondering if Kevin’s luck as an arsonist was going to change and, if so, how long it was going to take to kick in.

The more he thought about it, the dumber his plan seemed and the more ill-prepared he realized they were.

“You two have been there recently,” Ross said to McDaniels and his friend. “What do you suggest we do? What’s the best way to go in? If I remember right, there’s a long drive coming off the road, and it sort of ends at a big open space between Holt’s house and barn. The smokehouse is right there between the two.”

“Ain’t no smokehouse no more,” Hec said.

“I know, but that’s where the monster is—”

“The angel?”

“It’s no angel, but yeah. And what I’m trying to figure out is how we get there. However many people they have, I assume they’ll be watching that road. We need to find some sort of back way or side way to get on to Holt’s ranch.”

The flakes were changing color as they fell from the sky, white to green to yellow to red, but they froze when they hit the ground, and within moments, the earth had begun to be covered with a thin sheen of ugly brown-colored ice.

“We’ll figure it out on the way,” Ross said. “We’d better get moving, or we won’t be able to drive.”

McDaniels and Hec got in the backseat with their rifles, and Kevin sat up front with him. Ross put the car into gear and started moving out slowly. The road was indeed starting to get slippery, and the snow, as it hit the windshield in one of its colored states, melted to gelatinous goop rather than water, but the wipers kept the glass relatively clear, and he was able to see where he was going.

He turned left at the corner where the beauty parlor used to be. A disturbing thought occurred to him. He was lucky to have escaped Magdalena the first time, especially with that mob gathering in front of the store. Did that mean that his luck had now changed and he would not be able to get out safely this time?

Ross tried not to obsess on the thought, but it worried him.

He’d also had no problem getting in to see the monster before, with Lita and Dave. Did that mean they would not be able to get anywhere near it today?

Such concerns were not unreasonable. If McDaniels was right and the thing was close to hatching, it stood to reason that its powers would be getting stronger.

Ross drove carefully, hands at ten and two on the wheel. “So how do you think we get in there? Where do we go?” The last time, he and Lita and Dave had pretended to be believers. He didn’t think that ruse would work again.