Coven

Oh, no, she thought. He didn’t—he couldn’t have—

She picked the hewer off the floor and ran upstairs.

The extromitter glowed weirdly in Besser’s dark office. When Lydia put two and two together, she didn’t come up with four, she came up with DUMB ASS. More than likely, and for some unknown reason, Wade had gone back into the labyrinth.

Besser’s desk clock read 11:44. She knew that the labyrinth was leaving at midnight. She also knew that five minutes before midnight, recharge would occur, and she had no idea what that entailed. One more thing she knew: Wade wouldn’t last a second in the labyrinth on his own. Goddamn imbecile, she thought. She saw no other choice but to go in after him. But as she reached for Tom’s extromission key, she heard…what?

What were they? Grunts?

She turned quickly, hefting the weight of the hewer. She thought it might be Wade, but when the shadow— and the sloppy, wet sound it brought—crossed the office door, she knew far too well who it was.

“Huh hi, Lydia. You’re sure lookin’ mighty pretty tonight.”

When she saw the state of the thing which stepped into the block of moonlight, all Lydia could say was, “Oh, fuck!”

“I always kind of had a crush on ya. Course, I never said nothin’, figured you’d laugh at me, you know?”

But Lydia was definitely not laughing. She was as revolted as she was terrified. The thing facing her was Porker.

Wade said he’d been killed in the grove by the sisters—disemboweled. But she needed no explanation when she saw the knob end of the transceptionrod in his head.

Porker was naked, huge, pale as turned cream. His completely eviscerated abdominal cavity hung open in plain view. No organs there, just empty space. The sisters had eaten his innards and brought him back for service, getting double their money’s worth of the poor obese slob.

“Where’s Wade?” Porker asked.

“How should I know?”

“Did he go back into the labyrinth?”

“He’d have to be crazy to do that.”

Porker’s boyish, chubby face turned up in a grin. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“All right, how about this: I don’t know where Wade is.”

“I think you do,” the young, insecure voice replied. Muddy bare feet trudged forward, thudding. “And you’re going to tell me.”

Porker had been gross enough in real life; dead, naked, and gutted, he was grosser still. Lydia swung the hewer, hoping the creature’s huge limbs would be too sluggish to respond. Instead the fat hands blurred, caught the hewer below the blade, and tossed it aside. The big boyish pumpkin grin blazed in the moonlight.

The clock read 11:45. Lydia shucked her Trooper, without much confidence. She remembered how effective bullets were against the dead. Nevertheless, she fired two Magnums into Porker’s plump face. His head jerked back, the face cracked. One more double tap from the Trooper widened the crack to a grinning fissure, but like a monster sleepwalker, Porker continued to lope for her. Flaps of white flab hung ragged around the opened belly, through which the obvious erection peeked. Porker grinned in spite of his divided face, and said, “You haven’t had it till you’ve had it from a dead man.”

Despair touched her frown. Lydia was sick to death of being a sex object to monsters and dead men. She shrieked, disgusted, as Porker’s body collided into her. Before she could even get off her last two shots, he dragged her down, straddled her, and began to open her pants.

««—»»

The labyrinth was cold now, like a meat locker. Wade’s breath condensed before his face. The psilight was so low he could see neither walls nor floor. Only the extromitter dot of each access guided him from place to place. Tracking guidance point, he forced steadily into memory, searching.

He shivered, yet the bomb in his hand seemed to be gaining temperature. Soon it would be too hot to hold. He glanced, almost casually, from the next subinlet. The sign hovered:

EMWGUIDANCETRACKINGPOINT.

“Eureka!” he whooped. He extromitted into the canted chamber of glowing red and yellow threads. The crisscrossing, intense light brightened even as he watched. Wade didn’t know this place from a hole in the ground, but there was one thing he felt sure of: something big was in the works, and it was going to happen soon.

Sweating, he dropped the bomb on the floor and extromitted back out.

Dead sensorposts extruded from the ceiling. Thank God they were inactive now. Getting in had been easy, and he saw no reason why getting out shouldn’t be just as easy. “Home, James,” he muttered. He plugged in his key, thinking down down down! and disappeared into the glowing black slit.

««—»»

Porker was drooling on her, fumbling with her pants. Lydia couldn’t even squirm against the tremendous, dead weight. The broken face and toothy grin twitched in lust.

Gagging, she poked the Trooper. The blue steel barrel entered the spreading crack and she squeezed off round number five. Gun smoke and bits of pulp gusted back into her own face. She heard something clink, and Porker stiffened.

She fired the last round, keeping the barrel deep in his face. Like a lid, the top of his skull blew off—the transceptionrod flew across the room. Porker made a deep, lowing sound, like an impaled cow, then sidled over, dead.

“Thank you, Colonel Colt,” she whispered, and glanced at the clock: 11:47. What bothered her most, as she grabbed the hewer and began to extromit, was this: If they’d seen fit to bring Porker back from the dead, what had they done with…

««—»»

Sergeant J. T. Peerce stepped out of the final subinlet before the main point access. “St. John! Over here!”

Wade froze. A reflex nearly caused him to use his jeans for a bathroom. Peerce waved from the servicepass, wearing a clean police uniform and the same redneck sneer he’d been born with. In other words, Peerce looked normal.

“I saw you die,” Wade stammered. “Last night, in the grove.”

“Do I look like I’m dead, you daddy rich nitwit?”

But how could this be? “I saw the sisters kill you!”

“You musta been seein’ things, then, ’cos I’m standin’ here, ain’t I? I got away from them bitches after you and Chief White split. Come on, will ya!”

Wade considered this. He’d been scared shitless last night, and come to think of it, he wasn’t really sure what he’d seen. Sometimes the trauma of horror played games with the mind.

“What are you doing here?” Wade asked, still unsure.

“Lookin’ for you, ya moe ron. Prentiss got half the force out searchin’ for ya. She said ya might’ve come back here when we found that punk Jervis’ body with no key ’round his neck.”

Wade took several cautious steps forward. The power of suggestion plus seeing Peerce alive and well left him no choice but to be convinced.

“Come on, goddamn it! We gotta hightail it outta here. Prentiss told me this place takes off in ten minutes. Move it!”

But seeing was believing, wasn’t it? Or at least seeing what you wanted to believe. Right now all Wade wanted to see was someone on his side.

He shed his reservations and approached Peerce.