spurting but overflowing from the rent skin, cascading onto the grass.
Penelope was not being held but had been thrown on the grass to the left of her mothers and was attempting to sit up. She saw her mothers whooping and cackling as the younger policeman was stripped and gutted, Mother, Margeaux ripping into the entrails with her fingers after the spears had opened the flesh.
'What are you doing?' Penelope screamed. 'What's happening?'
What was happening? Dion wondered. But though he wanted to scream too, though he wanted to cry, he didn't.
Instead, for no reason whatsoever, as he watched the mothers laughing and gleefully playing in the blood, he started to smile.
He is here.
The knowledge burst upon Dennis Mccomber fully formed. The officer rolled down the window of his patrol car and dumped out the coffee he'd been drinking. He reached for die bottle of wine on the seat next to him, popped the half-stopped cork, and allowed himself a long, luscious drink.
He is here.
He thought of the chief's daughter and wondered if that little minx was going to be there as well. She probably would. Hell, of course she would. She'd known about it even before he had.
He thought of the way her head had been bobbing up and down in her boyfriend's lap. Had she taken him all the way into her mouth? Had she deep-throated him? Mccomber was pretty sure that she had. Even if she hadn't, what the fuck difference did it make? She'd deep throat him.
She'd suck him all the way down to the root. He'd make her. He'd fuck that little slut's face so hard she'd be coughing up sperm for a month.
He is here.
Yes, He was here, and it was time to meet Him. It was time to get shitfaced and fuck his brains out for the glory °f his new god.
Amen.
Mccomber took another swig from the bottle and started the car.
Someone unplugged the jukebox, and Frank Douglas was all set to scream at the little pissant, whoever he was, &nd kick him out on his troublemaking ear, when he saw that everyone in the bar had stopped dancing, s moving, stopped talking, and were all staring at him.
'He is here,' someone said, whispered, and the voic was like a shout in the silent bar.
Frank felt suddenly cold.
He glanced toward the door, saw that Ted the bouncer | was standing with two of me patrons, a half-finished botf tie of Daneam red dangling from his hand.
What the hell was going on?
He is here.
He knew what was going on. Well, he didn't know, not! exactly, but he knew that the past few weeks had been J building up to this, and he was not surprised that it was occurring now. He looked over the counter at the assembled patrons, jostling one another to the left and the right, shuffling unthinkingly into a line as they continued to stare unblinkingly at him. s He reached under the bar for his shotgun, felt comfort in its familiar heft as he removed it from its perch. He did not look down at the gun, did not look away from the;' crowd, unwilling to give them any edge.
Most of these bastards were loaded, crocked, three sheets to the fucking wind. They might be all tanked up and full of courage, right now, but when it came down to it, when he started; blasting, they'd scatter and run like scared jackrabbits. [
When he started blasting?
He glanced over at Ted, saw the gleeful belligerence hi the bouncer's face.
Yes. When.
For it was going to happen. He had been in fights before, been in more bar brawls than he cared to remember, and there was always a point past which the violence was inevitable. No matter what was said or done, no matter how much talking went on, it was going to happen.
They'd passed that point when the jukebox was unplugged.
The shotgun was loaded, in preparation for an emergency, and in one smooth motion--a motion he had practiced hffront of the mirror and in back of the bar until he could do it the way he'd seen it done in a movie--he swung the weapon up, barrel pointing straight into the center of the crowd.
'Back off!' he ordered. 'Back off and get the fuck out of here! Bar's closed!'
A red-haired woman laughed. Frank noticed with shock that her skirt was off--she was wearing only a blouse and panties. As his gaze moved from one person to another, he saw that many of the men and women had clothing that was ripped or missing.
'He is here!' someone yelled.
'Wine!' a woman cried. 'We need more wine!'
'The bar's closed!' Frank repeated, shifting the shotgun.
The red-haired woman laughed again.
And Frank blew her face off.
He didn't mean to. Or at least he didn't think he meant to. It happened so fast. She was laughing at him and he was pointing the gun at her and his gaze went from her black panties to the look of black hatred on her slutty face and he hated that look and he wanted her to shut up and before he could even think about it he was pulling the trigger and when he could see again she was down and her face had been blown off.
And the others rushed him.
He had no time to reload, no time to do anything. Ted was in front, and he leaped the bar and yanked the shotgun from his hand, and then others were hopping over the counter. He saw breasts and fists, pubic hair and penises. He went down, punched and poked, scratched and kicked, and he heard bottles being smashed, chairs being thrown. There was laughing and whooping, the smell of newly opened alcohol. Wine spilled onto his face.
Above him, Ted grasped the shotgun like a golf club and lifted it over his shoulder, crying, 'Fore!'
Frank did not even have time to scream before the butt of the shotgun smashed in the side of his head.
Pastor Robens cowered in his office, his back to the locked door, listening to what was going on in his church but afraid to confront it and put a stop to it, afraid even to look at the blasphemies that were being perfo under his roof.
Under His roof.
That was the most horrifying thing of all, the utter lackl of respect for God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ.
They had been there already when he'd returned fromi his nightly visit to the AIDS hospice. They'd broken intoj the church, had smashed one of the side windows to gets in, and they were dancing in the aisles, ten or fifteen of-j them, teenagers and young adults, some sort of horrible rap music blasting from a boombox that had been set up on the dais. There were wine bottles on the carpet, wine bottles in the hands of the dancers, and he'd stormed into, the church filled with rage and righteous indignation, screaming at them to leave immediately. He'd charged to the front of the church, turned off the boombox, whirled to face the revelers And he'd seen the statue.
The statue of Christ, his statue of Christ, the one he had received from the Reverend Morris in Atlanta. It was lying on its side on the front pew, and it had been desecrated, a garish clown's smile painted on the face with lipstick, an enormous clay phallus appended to the crotch.
Standing on the pew next to the statue was a young woman with blond-and-black streaked hair. She was wearing a black see-through bra and a short black skirt, but the skirt was hiked up, and she had on no underwear. She was fingering herself, her hips swiveling in a slow, sensual motion.
There was a topless girl in the midst of the now motionless dancers, a boy with an erection emerging from his open zipper. Two young men, fully clothed, were lying on the floor underneath the broken window, embracing.
The lecture he'd intended to deliver died on his lips. He saw now that there was something hard and corrupt and vaguely threatening in the faces of these drunken teens, a knowing belligerence he had not noticed at first.
