confused look came over his face. “Which ain’t all that long…”
Lobo rubbed his face with his hands like he was scrubbing it, trying to rub some feeling into it. Fear stamped his features. He looked up at Jack, Neal, said, “Don’t! Don’t kill me!”
Jack and Neal exchanged glances. Neal said, “What’s all this talk of killing? Nobody mentioned killing but you.”
Jack chimed in, “You’re the one with the knife.”
Lobo said, “I was scared, I didn’t know what I was doing!” He rubbed and chafed his right wrist and forearm. “You like to busted my wrist when you kicked it, mister. It hurts awful bad.”
Neal was unsympathetic. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot pulling a stunt like that. Anyway, the hand’s still working. I don’t see that anything’s broken.”
Jack said, “You pulled that knife quick enough.”
Lobo said, “To defend myself. I thought you were some of Them.” The way he said “Them,” you could practically hear it being capitalized.
Jack said, “Them?”
“The devil men!”
Neal scoffed, “That crazy talk won’t buy you anything. You’re sane enough, so talk sense. And make it quick.”
A shift came over Lobo’s features, firming them with stubbornness. He looked down, not looking Jack or Neal in the face. He muttered, “I know what I saw…”
Jack said, “What did you see?”
Lobo looked up now, staring Jack in the face, studying him. He blinked repeatedly, his watery eyes glimmering. He came to a decision. “Nope. You ain’t one of Them.”
Jack pressed, “One of who?”
Lobo stared Neal in the face, coming to a quick conclusion. “And I know you ain’t one of Them. You got a mean face, but not as mean as they got.”
Neal said, “Who’s Them? Damn it, man, speak out plain!”
Lobo said, “Them devil men.” Tension fled from his face, his expression sliding into slack- jawed relief. “Huh! Maybe you ain’t going to kill me after all?”
Jack said, “We’re not killers.”
Lobo pointed out, “You got guns.”
“To defend ourselves. Like you with your knife. You’re not a killer. You just wanted to protect yourself. Against the devil men.”
Lobo grinned, bobbing his head in agreement. “That’s right! Now you got it. So can I have my knife back?”
Neal said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Jack said, “You don’t need a knife, Lobo. We’ll protect you against the devil men.”
“So you say. But it’s easier said than done. They got Satan’s power working for them.”
“Remember the Psalm, Lobo: ‘I will fear no evil.’”
“You would if you seen what I saw. That’s why they want to kill me.”
“What did you see?”
Lobo shook his head, sadly. “Can’t tell.”
“Why not?”
“If I do, they’ll have to kill you, too. Nobody is safe who knows the truth.”
Neal, fighting down impatience, said, “We’ll take our chances.”
Jack said, “They’ll want to kill us anyway for siding with you, Lobo. So you might as well tell us. The more we know, the better we’ll be able to help.”
Lobo tilted his head to the side, as if listening to unheard voices. “You may just have something there…’Course, bad as they are, the devil men ain’t the worst. Oh no.” He leaned forward, with an air of one about to impart some great truth. “It’s those hog-faced demons you really got to worry about!”
Neal, dangerously calm and soft-spoken, said, “Hog- faced demons, is that right?”
Lobo nodded vigorously. “The gospel truth. The devil men, they look just like us. Like anybody, only more mean- faced. That’s how they can walk among us. Two of Them have been dogging me all day, back in the hills. That’s where I live, all by myself, in a little hidey- hole I got fixed back up there.” He gestured toward the sandstone formations. “Ain’t nobody can find me in the rocks if’n’ I don’t want ’em to, devil men included.
“But I got hungry. I ain’t had nothing to eat for two days. There’s a hole under the fence that I slip right through sometimes at night. I sneak up in back of the kitchen here and raid them Dumpsters for what I can find. Lawd! The food that these here camp folk throw away would feed an army! Perfectly good food, meat, taters, bread, vegetables, sometimes even cake!” He smacked his lips at the conclusion of the recital.
Jack prompted, “Camp folk? You mean the folks living here in the compound?”
Lobo nodded. “The very same. It’s like a church camp, an old-time revival meeting, the way they’re always getting together and listening to that ol’ preacher of theirs. He’d come on the loudspeaker and jaw to ’em for hours at a time and they’d just be a-setting there in the campground, taking it all in. Hoo-whee, how that man could talk! ’Course, it was way over my head, I couldn’t make no never mind of it. But they seemed like decent enough folks, what I seen of them.”
His face fell, becoming despondent. “Not that it did ’em any good in the end, though, not when those hog- faced demons came to drag ’em all off to hell last night.”
Jack said, “It happened last night, you say?”
“Yes, sir! As I live and breathe. It was only by the purest luck they didn’t get me, too! I come sneaking around when the moon was low, like I always do when I plan to do me some Dumpster diving. I was up in the rocks when I seen it, a green fog coming out of nowhere and covering the whole camp.”
“Green fog?”
“Green as pea soup, sonny! Damnedest thing I ever seen. Right off I knew it wasn’t natural, wasn’t nothing that comes from God’s good earth. It rose up out of the east and in less time than it takes to tell, it grew into a great big green cloud that rolled right over the whole danged camp and just set on it. Like to froze me in my tracks at the sight of it! I stayed up in the hills to marvel at it and a good thing, too. Else it would have got me, along with the rest of them poor souls.”
“The camp folks, the people in the compound.”
“None other. They was all sleeping, I reckon, tucked up tight in their bunks when the green cloud come up on ’em. Like a thief in the night, just like the Good Book says. That’s when them hog-faced demons showed. Lawd, they must’ve been vomited up straight out of the gates of hell! You never seen nothing like it, nobody ever did — and pray that you never do!
“Hog faces they had, big ol’ long snouts sticking out and big bug eyes a-goggling and staring! Hog faces and the bodies of men! And here’s something for you to think on: they didn’t come a-riding Satan’s lizards or flying in on bat wings, no sir. They drove up in cars! Cars, mind you, just like normal everyday folks out for a moonlight drive! Now, don’t that beat all?
“Then all hell broke loose. Them hog-faced demons fell on those poor folks like badgers on a warren of baby rabbits. It was something awful. They just waltzed right into their cabins and houses and carried ’em away. There was screaming and shouting and shooting and all kinds of unholy racket going on. I’m surprised they didn’t hear it over to the next county.”
Neal said, “You saw all this?”
Lobo’s expression was patronizing, almost pitying. “I’m telling it, ain’t I? The green cloud covered most of it at first, which was a mercy, but it thinned out and broke up pretty quick, so I seen most of it. The worst of it, sure, when the demons dragged those poor souls out into the open, herding them like cattle to the slaughterhouse. Some they killed straight off, gunned ’em down — seems funny, don’t it, Satan’s minions using firearms to do the Devil’s work here on earth? Guns and cars? Makes sense when you think about it, though. Who better than Lucifer to make use of the modern ways of destruction? No back number him, he’s up-to-date!
“The demons loaded every last one of ’em, man and woman, onto that blue bus. A blue bus! Them hog-faces got back in their cars and the blue bus and they all drove off straight to hell! Not before they almost got me, though. Like I said, that green cloud lifted mighty quick and I got antsy to see what was happening. I got a mite careless
