The Influence(79)

That thing was calling the shots.

Even though it was dead.

And if he didn’t put a stop to it now, well… who knew what would happen?

Why in the hell had he put the body into his smokehouse to begin with? What had he been thinking? Maybe he hadn’t been thinking. Maybe it had been thinking for him. Because all of his original reasons had turned out to be nonsensical. He’d wanted to hide the body so no one would find out what had happened: but half of the town had been at the party and those who hadn’t had soon learned about it from someone who had been. He wanted to somehow harness the energy he’d sensed in that horribly alien form: but he had no idea how to do that, and he’d discovered almost immediately that the power was affecting him rather than the other way around.

So what had kept him from acting sooner?

He wasn’t sure. But his life and livelihood had turned to shit since New Year’s Eve, and if Cameron had any hope of turning things around, he had to take action now before it was too late.

There was that slurping sound outside his bedroom door.

Unless it was too late already.

From somewhere on the ranch, someone screamed. It did not sound close by—not the barn, not the corral, not the barracks—but seemed to originate farther out, in the open grazing area. There was only the one scream, then silence, and Cameron imagined that one of the wetbacks had attempted to sneak off and had been stopped by… By what? Jorge wielding a machete? A hideously deformed cow with crazed red eyes and vampire fangs? Nothing he could conjure up seemed too farfetched.

Eventually, somehow, he fell asleep. He’d been trying to stay awake, and he didn’t know when he had dozed off, but he awoke in his bed, and outside the sun was up. His head was pounding, and his mouth tasted like an iguana had just taken a dump in it, but he was no longer afraid, and he unlocked and opened the door, striding down the hall to the stairs. He half-expected to see slime coating the floor, dripping from the walls and ceiling, but the hallway looked the same as always, and he took the steps two at a time, intending to get some matches from the kitchen, then some gasoline from the garage. He was going to torch the smokehouse and that demon inside it before anyone could stop him, and then this nightmare would finally be over.

He grabbed the box of matches from the top of the refrigerator and went outside.

His men, seemingly all of them—or all that were left—were standing in a Hands-Across-America line blocking the front of the smokehouse, as though they already knew what he planned to do and were determined to stop him. The wetbacks stared intently as he marched down the front steps and across the dirt, Jorge, in the middle, following his progress with particular interest.

To the right of the men, alone in the dirt at the edge of the drive, stood an unkempt man holding the strings of several barely aloft balloons. The balloon man was whistling a tune that was at once eerie and familiar, and it took Cameron a moment to realize why he recognized the melody—it was the tune the cat had been whistling in the vet’s office.

Holding onto what scant courage he had left, Cameron ignored them all and walked purposefully over to the garage, where he pulled open the door and went inside, picking up a half-full can of gasoline. His men were obviously under the control of that thing—he himself had felt the first faint stirrings of trepidation, which told him that he’d better act quickly while he still had the will—and his plan was to either go around them or rush through them, douse the smokehouse with gas and toss a match. If any of them tried to put out the fire, he would stop them. Somehow. His goal was to burn the shed and the body inside it, no matter what.

Carrying the gas can, he walked out of the garage—

And saw the line of ranch hands blocking his way.

In astonishingly quick time, they had moved en masse from the front of the smokehouse to the front of the garage. Jorge was at the fore, no longer part of the line, and it was he who pointed to the gas can. “What is that for?”

“You know,” Cameron said, and tried to move past him.

Jorge blocked his way. “No, sir. You cannot.”

“This is my house, goddamnit, my property, and I’ll do what I want with it! You cholos don’t fucking decide what happens here, I do!”

“No.”

Cameron lashed out, hitting Jorge across the face. The foreman did not fight back but merely smiled, blood seeping between his teeth. The sight was both sickening and frightening.

Behind the other men and off to the right, the balloon man was whistling that maddening tune.

“I need to do this,” Cameron said, and even to himself it sounded as though he was begging.

“No, sir,” Jorge repeated softly. “You cannot.”