conference room,' he said. 'Let's check it out.'
'Now we'll get to see him,' Woods said. 'A camera has no fear, no ideas, no thoughts, no biases. It just records what's there.' ........
'Maybe,' Sue said. :
They walked down the short paneled hallway to the conference room.
Robert switched on the lights, then rolled the TV around to the head of the conference table as the rest of them took their seats. He plugged in the television, and the videotape recorder on the metal shelf beneath it, popping in the tape He looked around quiet room. 'Ready?'
They all nodded. 'All right
There was silence in the conference room as the eotape began. Robert found that he was holding breath, and he forced himself to let out the air and tinue breathing. On the screen there was a nighttime of the desert near the ranch, an off-center comp osi with too much sand and not enough sky. Then the can shifted, focused, zoomed, and in the center of the pict floating in the air, was a tall pale figure that caused bumps to ripple over his body, caused his pulse to with fear.
The cup hugingsi.
They gasped as they saw it in its true form for the time. All of them.
Even Sue's grandmother drew in breath sharply. The reality was far worse than Robert feared. His imaginings had been horrible, but this st rous figure was beyond anything his mind had been to conjure. It was neither a dwarf nor a giant but was size of a tall man. Humanoid, it was extraordinarily almost skeletal, and naked, though it had no genitals. ] and bone junctures showed beneath the alabaster skh had a baby face---pudgy cheeks, small nose, char acre mouthmbut it was an old baby face. There were wrin where there should not have been, and the eyes were cient beyond reason, ancient and corrupt, filled with knowing evil that belied the innocence of the face's pl cal characteristics.
Although the head was hairless, of unnaturally white and unbelievably long hair grew unexpected parts of the body, dripping down from upper forearms, from under the chest, from the kn The hair blew wildly in the chill desert wind.
The creature smiled. There were no fangs, on!) overly large and toothy mouth.
Competing with the images was the soundtrack. Tracy Singleton was narrating, but her voice and observations were entirely superfluous, describing a scene she thought she saw, not the reality actually recorded by the camera. Muffled, far, far in the background, were screams and the sound of shattering glass, the noise of car engines racing and tires peeling out. Overlying this, almost overpowering it, was a liquid whooshing that was somewhere between wind and river, a strange antinoise that made everything seem as if it were happening in a vacuum instead of the real world.
The cup hugirngsi stared directly into the camera, an expression of pure malevolent hate on its twisted baby features. Then it sped away, turning from the camera and shrinking to a dot in the distance in less than a second.
The tape ended, the black of night followed by the gray and black dots of videotape static on the screen. The hissing of the speaker, loud and obnoxious though it was, seemed almost soothing after that hellish sound scape
'So that's what we're up against,' Rossiter said. His usual arrogance was gone, replaced by a tone of cowed humility.
Steve crossed himself 'We get should everyone into the churches. The whole town. Hole up there, right it out. Use 'em like forts.'
'Churches won't protect you,' Rich said. 'The vampire lives in a church.' Robert got up, turned off the VCR, turned off the TV. Sue's grandmother said something in Cantonese.
'Does anyone want to back out?' Sue translated. She looked around the room, at Robert, Rich, Rossiter, Woods, Buford, and the two policemen, her eyes searching each face. 'That is what is living inside the church. It's hundreds maybe thousands of years old. It's killed more people than any of us can imagine. It will not be lying in a coffin.
It will not be sleeping. If the church is light tight and I think it is, chances are the cup hugirngsi will I awake and waiting for us. We may all be killed. If any. you don't want to go through with this, say it now.' No one said a word.
Sue looked at her grandmother.
'Let's do it,' Robert said.
The wind began as they pulled out of the station parking lot, a cold, gritty gale that carried in tumbleweeds from the surrounding desert and filled the air with blowing sand, effectively cutting visibility to several yards.
Rich stared out the window of Robert's car at the unending cloud of swirling dust. He didn't like this at all. The darkness of night could at least be penetrated by light, but there was no way to nullify the effects Of a dust StOITn.
He wondered if the cup hugrngs/had somehow started the freakish wind.
'We'll find them,' Robert said gently. 'They'll be okay.'
'What?'
'Anna and Corrie.'
Rich nodded. 'Yeah.' He gave his brother a reassuring smile. He was fooling himself. He knew that. Despite what Sue's grandmother said, or what Sue said her grandmother said, he did not think Corrie and Anna were safe and in hiding. He knew, in his bones, that the cup hug/rngs/had found them in the church. And the monster did not take prisoners. It killed. Period.
But though he knew this inside, Rich still kept pretending to others he believed his family was safe, half pretending to himself. It was easier this way. He didn't have time to deal with emotions right now.
He could not allow him self to experience grief and pain and loss. That would come later. Right now he had a monster to destroy.
He looked out the window, at the vague silhouettes of the few buildings that could be seen through the blowing sand.
The dust storm, he thought, sounded almost like a terfall.
They were lined up in the street outside the church, waiting. Weapons in hand.
Wheeler's congregation.
Robert rounded the corner and slammed on his brakes, the other patrol car nearly plowing into his rear end.
The street was blocked. Scores of people--maybe a him dred, maybe more--stood in the center of the road. They were visible as little more than an army of shadows behind a curtain of sand, but it was obvious even through the swirling dust that they were clutching shovels and axes and pitchforks---implements that could double as weapons.
The radio crackled, and Rossiter's dry voice came over the tiny speaker. 'Welcoming committee.'
Several men in the front of the line were cradling rifles or shotguns in their arms, and before Robert even knew what had happened, the front and back windshields of the cruiser exploded in a shatter of Sand and safety glass, and a bullet buzzed past his head like a bee.
Immediately, instinctively, he threw the car into reverse and swung back around the corner, nearly colliding with the other patrol car as he swerved out of the line of fire. 'Get downl' he ordered. He braked to an abrupt halt just in front of the fire truck. He quickly picked up the mike, pressed down the speak button. 'Stay inside,' he said.
'Don't get out.'
He grabbed his rifle from its overhead rack and used the butt to clear out the remaining glass in the windshield.
The wind was dying down slightly, visibility improving, and he could see that the street was clear. The crowd had not followed him around the corner. The people were staying in front of the church. He looked over at Rich, next to him, at Sue and her grandmother, ducking down in the backseat. 'Are you all right? Is anyone hurt?'
'We're fine,' Sue said.
'Just a little shaken,' Rich agreed.
'This is going to be a little tougher than we anticipated,' Robert said.
