Wade and Anita stayed. The town would need a department store, so Miles and Doris stayed.
'What happened?' their children asked.
'A tragedy,' they were told.
Not a lie.
Less than fifty survivors crawled out of the rubble and picked up their lives, with the help of government psychiatrists. Including a teenage girl named Jean Zagone and several cowboys. None of the seven believed a word Jean or the cowboys said, but they kept their opinions to themselves.
'Someday,' Wade said, 'we'll have to kill them.'
'Or he will,' Jane Ann patted her swelling belly.
Whitfield would keep its dark secrets for a time.
Tons of explosives blasted the area in and around Tyson's Lake. The military believed they finally killed all the Beasts.
The surviving seven knew better.
The blasts drove the Beasts deeper into the earth, where their Master ordered them to sleep. Sleep, until he called them out. And after the military left, the Sentry surfaced, watching.
And the smashed, mashed, non-human thing that Jane Ann had driven over that first night of terror crawled from its sewer hiding place and into a dark, damp basement beneath the rubble of Whitfield. It healed itself, and then it slept. Waiting.
Around the county, there were other . . . creatures who slipped into hiding places. Satan closed their eyes, ordering them to sleep until he needed them.
They waited for his call.
Nydia sat in her villa, looking at the snow fall, her hands folded across her swelling belly. She was more beautiful than ever in her pregnancy.
The Demons in her kicked with life.
The witch smiled.
Jimmy patiently brushed her long hair.
The card on the door of room fifteen read: Sam B. Williams and Sam B. King. Inside, the two young men met each other for the first time.
They were both tall young men, well built. Each of them wore their hair short, just a bit longer than military fashion. They were older than average Freshmen, for each had spent three years in the military.
'Well, with two Sam's and two B's, that ought to confuse everybody around here,' a young man laughed.
'Yes,' the second young man smiled, his black eyes giving away nothing. 'What's your initial stand for?'
'Balon. How about yourself?'
'Black.'
Sam Balon King looked at a picture on a dresser. A very beautiful young woman, with dark eves and shining black hair. 'She's lovely.'' he said. 'Your girl?'
'My twin sister.'
'Sure! I should have noticed. What's her name?'
'Nydia.'
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Copyright © 1980 by William W. Johnstone
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First Printing: February, 1981
