The assistant took a look at the bodies of the paramedics. He had never seen anything quite like them. 'So pale,' he muttered. 'Almost as if they had no blood in them.'
'What'd you say, Max?'
'Oh—nothing.'
'Come look at the liver on this guy,' the M.E. said. 'He must have consumed a quart of booze a day. Liver's hard as a piece of leather.'
As Max dropped the sheet back over the ambulance driver, he did not notice the man's eyelids fluttering as new life rose to the surface.
'Yes,' Will Gibson said, handing the earring back to the chief. 'That belongs to Judith. Why are you asking me these questions, Chief Draper?'
'You've heard about Marie?'
'Yes. A terrible thing. Human animals roaming society. People who would do something like that should be shot on sight. But you don't think Judith had anything to do with the Fowler girl, do you?'
'Oh, no, Will. It's just we can't find Judith, and we want to talk to her. She might have seen something that would be of importance to the case.'
But Will wasn't buying that. 'Something's happened to her, hasn't it, Chief?'
'Will—' Joe said.
'No. Now you people level with me. If something has happened to Judith, I want to know. I have a right to know.'
'All right, Will,' Monty said. 'We found this earring just inside the mouth of a hole on her property. In the orchard. I'm going to get a search team together; ask for volunteers. I—'
'I am a longtime spelunker, Chief. There is no one more qualified in this town. Let me get my gear together and I'll go down in the hole.'
Monty sighed. But he knew the man was right. Will Gibson had crawled around every cave and hole in the ground he could find in the state of New York. 'All right, Will. I'll meet you out there in half an hour. But I will insist upon you being attached to a rope and be in radio contact with me.'
'Sometimes radios don't work down there, Chief. Not for any distance.'
'Those are the terms of the deal, Will.'
'All right, Chief. I have no objections to that.'
Monty's car radio was squawking when the men returned to the police car. 'Logandale One,' Monty said. 'Come in.'
'Chief, what is your ten-twenty?'
'In front of the hardware store.'
'Was that ambulance that took the Fowler girl into Blaine a hospital rig?'
'You mean belonging to the hospital?'
'Right.'
'Negative. The independent service out of Aumsville. Don't know why Jenkins called that one.'
'Ah—O.K., Chief. Can you ten-nineteen?'
'On my way.'
'What the hell?' Joe muttered.
'Don't know. So let's go find out.'
Father Le Moyne stood gazing out his living room window. He had heard all the young couple had told him, but he found it difficult to believe. He knew in his heart, though, it was true. He turned slowly. 'Whitfield was where that giant meteor struck several years ago, destroying the entire town, killing everyone in it.'
'That was not just a meteor, Father.'
'Are you telling me—'
'It was the hand of God.'
Le Moyne crossed himself, his eyes closed. 'And the poor Fowler girl is a part of all this?'
'That poor Fowler girl, as you put it, Father, may now be a part of the living dead,' Nydia said.
'I cannot accept that premise, Nydia,' the priest spoke sharply. 'I do not believe in vampires or zombies. Possession, of course. But it ends there.'
'You're wrong, Father,' Sam spoke bluntly. Another trait he had inherited from his father. 'Would you like for us to show you?'
'I—' The priest hesitated.
'Why are you afraid, Father?' Nydia asked, tilting her head to one side, brushing back a strand of midnight hair that fell over one eye each time she did so.
The priest glanced at her. 'Perhaps, Mrs. Balon, I know things about Satan you do not.'
'I'm sure you do, Father. But I can assure you I have been on a much more intimate basis with the Devil's workers than you.'
