Rocks and dirt clods showered down on the group and the boulders wiggled like loose teeth. Bits of soil and thick rot spewed from the Earth Mouth.
'Sonuvawhore!' Chester shouted, falling backward and dropping his shotgun. It clattered against stone and slid to the ground.
Chester rolled over onto his hands and knees and scrabbled to the edge of the granite face that shielded them from the Earth Mouth.
'Dee-double-damn you. We're going to blow you back to hell,' Chester yelled, shaking his fist in the air. The tremor eased and Chester looked back to see DeWalt sweating over the dynamite. Tamara was watching DeWalt, too, but her eyes seemed focused beyond the paper-wrapped sticks.
'I wonder how stable that stuff is,' Emerland said, grinning like a doped-up court jester. Chester figured Emerland was touched in the head, two pecks shy of a full bushel, nuttier than a Payday bar. Hell, they all were, every single goddamn thing in the ass-end-up universe.
'Don't know if we ought to wait around for the next little hiccup,' Chester said.
Tamara finally spoke. 'Gentlemen, I think it's time. Is the detonator ready, Herbert?'
DeWalt nodded. 'As far as I can tell. May as well put the rest of the TNT into the thing. I just have to push this button. The explosion of this batch will set off the rest of it.'
Tamara lifted the can of Roundup from where it had fallen on its side. She carried it to the ledge, removed the cap, and tilted the can, letting the thick concentrate glug down into the deep alien hole. The wormy tendrils inside the throat shriveled and writhed and the white roots along the stream bank began turning to jelly. Tamara tossed the empty can into the dark opening.
'Drink up, you old bastard,' Chester said. He lifted the sack of Acrobat M-Z and tore the flap, ripping at the paper with his aching fingers. He tossed it over the side in a white dust storm, then emptied his pockets of the dynamite and rolled the sticks gently into the hole. Emerland followed suit with the Sevin after breaking the bag open against an edge of sharp stone.
'Attaway to go, Emerland.' Chester slapped the developer on the back. Chester was starting to like him a little, now that both of them had dirty knees and money didn’t matter. He wondered if maybe they were all the same under the skin after all, that rich or poor or sinner or saint, they were all equal in the eyes of God when they faced a common enemy.
Naw, he thought. Don't reckon so.
He chomped into his tobacco and rolled it around in his mouth to collect some juice, then spat into the Earth Mouth. He watched with satisfaction as powdery molds fell from the roof of the cave. He noticed for the first time that the light of dawn was now brighter than the neon radiance of the hole.
The ground shook again, frantically but with less force. Chester hoped that the poison was slowing it down, making it weaker. Tamara had said something about the alien becoming part of what it ate, and if it was part of the earth now, then a generous helping of earthly poison ought to put a twist in its innards.
'Do it. The sun,” he heard Tamara saying to DeWalt.
'Can't.”
Chester turned and saw the tears in DeWalt's eyes.
DeWalt pushed the button again. 'Must be the battery. Dead.'
They looked at each other. 'Then so the fuck are we,' Chester said.
The Earth Mouth rumbled as if in agreement.
'Ginger? Honey? What did you-' Robert stopped. Then he tried an experiment.
'No, Daddy, I don't want any chocolate milk. That's only for nice times, not now,' Ginger said.
'Can you-?'
'Hear Mommy? Sometimes her words just come in my head. She thinks it’s sort of silly. But she's scared, too.'
Anxiety ground Robert's guts between its molars. 'Can you take me to Mommy?'
'No, she doesn't want me to. She wants us to stay here. Until they blow up the monster…'
' They? '
'Emerland and Chester and Herbert DeWalt. That's funny, DeWalt has a bleeding heart.'
'Tell me about them.'
She did.
Bill felt empty, aching from loneliness, as if his heart had been ripped out and replaced with straw. Yet he also burned with rage at the things that had killed Nettie. He turned away from the graveyard and looked at the patrolman.
Arnie swung his two-handed grip on the gun from side to side, tracking the slow, swarming movements among the trees and monuments. His eyes were wide with fear and shock. 'Do I shoot them, or what? Where the hell is the chief when a body needs him?'
Bill figured they didn't teach this situation at the police academy. 'It's no sin to kill what’s already dead,' Bill said. “Or at least ought to be.”
'Are you drunk or something?'
'No. Was blind but now I see.”
Sandy Henning fell through the hedge ten feet away from them and looked up with her deep alien eyes. She ran the broadleaf of her tongue over her swollen lips. She sprayed something toward the sky, her sagging face quivering. Arnie pulled the trigger twice, and the thing that had been Sandy Henning exploded into a slick pool of miasma.
'They're juicy,' Bill said. 'Miracles never stop ceasing. Behold. He turns the water into wine.'
'Bill?'
Bill looked at the stars and the fading moon, trying to see the face of his cruel God.
'Bill?' Arnie asked again, and Bill could actually hear the patrolman gulp.
'Yes, Arnie?' Bill smiled. His smile scared himself almost as much as it did Arnie.
'Got a shotgun in the car, if you're up to helping.'
Bill followed Arnie to the cruiser, its lights oscillating against his face in a steady panic. Arnie tossed Bill the shotgun, a short-barrel pump-action. Then he reached under the dash and pulled out his radio mic. 'Unit Six here, you copy, Base?'
Static squawked into the air. The hedges were coming to life, teeming with the creatures who had turned their affections toward Bill and Arnie. Bill pumped the shotgun and the clack was pure metal authority.
'10-4, Unit Six, I copy,” the radio sputtered. “What's your 10–20?'
'Responding to that 10–36 at Windshake Baptist. I've got a 10–44, or, uh, a 10-hell, I don't know if this situation's even got a damned number.'
'Come again?'
'10–33. Send backup. On the double. Got some creepers here.'
'10-9, Unit Six?'
'Screw it.” Arnie tossed the mic onto the seat. He turned and fired his revolver at the nearest moist hunk of plantmeat. Bill raised the shotgun and pressed the butt against his shoulder.
'We will come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,' Bill sang in a barely recognizable melody, before sending a handful of pellets screaming into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
James looked hopefully out the window as the heavy moon sagged over the horizon, its gravity towing the night along with it. The orange and red flames of dawn licked at the retreating darkness.
Maybe now he would be safe. Now he could warn people, in the daring daylight when sanity wasn't as suspect. He hadn't seen any more of them in the last couple of hours, and the hand had dissolved to a spoonful of
