Christine was not a replicant. With the exception of Ariel Potter-who was not a mere replicant but a Builder of a unique kind-no citizen of the town under the age of sixteen would be replaced. For reasons of efficiency and in respect of the Creator’s philosophy, they would all be processed by Builders, some of them this day and the next, but most of them on Thursday, children’s day.
Jarmillo went into the Benedetto house just as Officers Dunn and Caponica descended the stairs from the second floor.
“There should be a child. A little girl.”
“Not here,” Caponica said.
Jarmillo thought about Bryce Walker and Travis Ahern, about Nummy O’Bannon and the vagrant Lyss. Now this.
He ran to his patrol car and by radio arranged for roadblocks to be established just beyond city limits, at each end of town.
He ordered Community operatives at the telephone company to shut down landline phone service, both local and long-distance. For now, cell-phone service within Rainbow Falls must be maintained, but relay towers capable of transmitting beyond the town should be disabled. Cable-television service, which also provided Internet access, would be discontinued as well, at once.
And they had to find the shooter who had killed the replicant of Denise Benedetto. Quickly.
chapter 71
In the roadhouse, Dolly Samples and Loreen Rudolph were standing by the bar, talking about breast-reduction surgery, when the handsome young man stepped through the blue-velvet curtains and onto the stage.
The bar was closed. Just as parishioners brought their food for the family social, those who wanted drink were expected to provide it for themselves.
Because of her ample endowment, Loreen had suffered backaches and neckaches for the past three or four years. She also didn’t like the way some bold men stared at her; based on nothing more than her superstructure, they seemed to think she had round heels, when she was in fact a faithful wife whose gravest transgression was once in a while watching one of those daytime-TV talk shows that always featured women who slept with their sons-in-law and middle-aged men who wanted to become young women and dance in Vegas.
Her husband, Nelson, supported her regarding the surgery; he said he hadn’t married her because of her bra size. “Honeylamb, it was your blue eyes, your pot roast, and your good heart that got me to the altar. Just leave enough up top so you float if you fall in the river.”
Loreen worried, however, about going under the knife, about all the things that could go wrong during surgery, because she had two kids to raise and a disabled mother to look after. In addition, she thought maybe it was wrong to have some plastic surgeon reshape the body that God had given her-not sinful, exactly, but ungrateful.
“Loreen, you silly thing,” Dolly Samples said, “God gave you an appendix, too, but if you get appendicitis, He doesn’t expect you to let it burst and just die like a dog.”
That was when the handsome young man stepped onto the stage, and right behind him came a second no less striking than the first. They were at once joined by as beautiful a young woman as Dolly had ever seen.
She directed Loreen’s attention to the stage, and Loreen said, “Not even the Osmonds in their prime looked that good. They’re like three angels.”
“Reverend Fortis never mentioned entertainment.”
“They’re definitely entertainment,” Loreen agreed. “Real-world people don’t look that good.”
Dolly said, “Even most show-biz people don’t look half that good. I bet they have gorgeous voices, too. You just know they do. But where’s their guitars?”
“They don’t look like a comedy act,” Loreen said. “They look like a music act.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
The three stood together, smiling brightly at the gathered families, and the power of their smiles was so compelling that the roar of conversation in the roadhouse diminished rapidly. All over the room, parishioners turned to look at the performers. Some children stood on chairs to see over the heads of their elders. People sitting in the mezzanine booths got to their feet and came to the railing between them and the main floor.
Reverend Fortis stepped through the curtains and onto the stage behind the trio. He held up his hands, whereupon the congregants fell entirely silent.
“My brothers and sisters,” said Reverend Fortis, “these three are lambs of God come to take away the sins of the world. Be not afraid of what they say or do, for they are here only to escort you to the new Jerusalem.”
Still at the bar, Dolly Samples said, “What on earth is the man saying? Does that sound like hoohaw to you?”
Loreen said, “What it doesn’t sound like is Reverend Fortis. It’s his voice but the words are fiddle-faddle.”
The three young singers, who evidently weren’t singers after all, stepped off the stage, onto the dance floor, where the bewildered congregants parted as if to make way for royalty.
The radiantly beautiful woman stopped in front of Johnny “Tank” Tankredo, who was big enough to bench-press a horse and gentle enough to make the horse happy about the experience.
Tank smiled at her, and there was an air of expectation as thick as anything that Dolly had ever felt, even just before a Garth Brooks concert back when he cared about blowing the roof off the place, and then the young woman’s smile became a yawn. The yawn grew until her mouth occupied most of her face, and out of her mouth came something like a churning mass of bees, though it was a part of her and not a separate thing. It bored right through Johnny Tankredo’s face and out the back of his head, and it pulled him against the girl, though she wasn’t a girl anymore, and Johnny began to come apart.
Dolly said, “Lord Jesus help us,” as she reached into her big purse and drew out her.38 Colt.
From her purse, Loreen retrieved her SIG P245, and said, “Praise the Lord, get the kids out of here.”
People were screaming but not as much as Glenn Botine, a full-time car mechanic and part-time quarter-horse breeder, would have expected under the circumstances, not like they screamed in horror movies. Mostly they were screaming names, shouting to their kids and wives and husbands, families trying to find their own and get out.
His Smith & Wesson Model 1076, the civilian version of the FBI’s pistol, loaded with 180-grain Hydra-Shok rounds, wouldn’t be worth spit against something like the thing that chewed up Tank Tankredo, but it ought to take out the Reverend Kelsey Fortis, who obviously was either not the reverend anymore or was in league now with Satan.
Glenn mounted the stage, where the preacher, grinning like a fiend, stood swaying from side to side. The reverend proved too slow on the draw to fire back, which alone vouched certain that he wasn’t the Kelsey Fortis whom Glenn had once admired as much as he had ever admired a mortal man. The fact that seven point-blank shots were required to take him down and keep him down only confirmed that there must have been at least a devil in the preacher if not something worse.
Someone was shouting that the front doors were chained shut.
Van Colpert, who had done two tours in Afghanistan, right away got Turner Ward and Doogie Stinson to agree that if the front entrance was chained shut or otherwise barred, the other exits also must be barricaded from outside. No sense wasting time running to one useless exit after another.
Leaving the women and some of the older men to gather the kids by the main exit, the three men circled the room to the bar, staying away from the freaky killing machines or whatever the hell they were. Machines seemed a better word for them; there was without a doubt a Terminator feel to the scene.
Erskine Potter was behind the bar, just himself, and from the smug look on the mayor’s face, Van Colpert knew that he was a Judas. Van shot him with his.44 Magnum and Turner Ward shot him with his modified Browning Hi- Power, and Doogie Stinson scrambled over the bar and shot him four times with both of his Smith & Wesson Model 640.38 Special pocket revolvers.
Potter kept a 12-gauge shotgun behind the bar, loaded with buckshot. It was only for show. He never used it in
