CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER, HOLDING HER BY THE WAIST, RON helped Chandal up the embankment. He would not let her rest until they had reached the car. Rocking back a little, teetering, she gripped the edge of the car door.

“Daddy, Mom is bleeding. She’s bleeding.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Ron breathed.

“She fell when they came. All the way down there.”

“I know, I know. Get in the car, Kristy.”

Kristy opened the back door and slid in first. Ron felt Chandal starting to sink to her knees. “Hang on, Del.” He clenched his teeth, moved his hand slowly over her cheek and nose, felt the puffy flesh, bruised and raw under his fingers. He moved her body forward until she dropped wearily onto the seat.

Ron was panting when he climbed in, panting and soaked with sweat. He could feel his heart pounding. He locked the doors and rolled up the windows.

The car had only moved a few yards when a shadowy figure stepped into the roadway ahead. The girl stood motionless, her face almost hidden in the shadows, ten yards off.

His heart pounding, Ron hit the headlights. The girl’s face remained immobile.

“Ron, it’s Nancy!” Chandal moaned.

“I know.”

“Stop, Ron. Help her.”

“Please, Daddy—it’s Nancy,” Kristy cried.

Ron slowed the car. Nancy held out her hands pleadingly, begging him to stop. He let her image slide past him, though he kept the white blur in the corner of his eyes; her face stayed where it was. Abruptly he hit the brakes.

“Kristy, open the door,” Ron said.

“All right, Daddy.”

Kristy opened the door as Nancy moved to the car.

“Hurry, Nancy,” Ron said. “Get in.”

Nancy gazed into the back seat, and not a sound was heard; there was something terrible, yet softening, also, in the silence; and when it broke, it broke suddenly and abruptly—it broke with a shrill and bloodcurdling cry from Kristy—the vent of the final despair as Nancy lunged for her.

Still screaming, Kristy fell back across Chandal’s lap, too late for her mother to protect her.

Fingernails raked her face, gouging the corner of her eye; fingernails tore at her neck, pulled at her hair; violently Nancy tore into Kristy’s shoulder and began dragging her from the car.

Ron spun around and grabbed for her throat. She opened her mouth and snapped at his arm with her teeth. He brought his fist around and drove it into her face. Her eyes walled back. Spittle spewed from her mouth. With one vicious thrust, he threw her body from the car. Her scream was instantly drowned out by the confusion of closing and locking the door.

Kristy screamed again as the first human hit the windshield with a hammer and sent showers of glass into the back seat. They were all over the car now, clawing and scratching and trying to pry their way in. One of them was Mrs. Taylor.

Ron jammed the car into reverse and pressed down on the accelerator. The car shot back and he could see bodies thrown into the dust. Jamming the car into drive, he pressed down again on the gas pedal. The car darted forward.

“Dad, Mom is... blood!” Kristy screamed and threw herself forward grabbing hold of her father’s neck. The car swerved, almost colliding into a tree. Ron shifted his foot from the gas pedal to the brake.

“Kristy, stop it. STOP IT!”

“I’m scared!”

Ron held tightly to the steering wheel. The car slid down an incline, but he knew he had it in control. Quickly he brought it up onto the main road, but instantly his back tires locked into the soft earth. He smashed his foot on the accelerator; the back tires dug deeper.

Ahead, like a group of frenzied animals, their ranks reeled and reformed, lurching forward under the momentum of recovery. There was no concern for their lives, but the anger on their faces indicated a deeper perplexity of hurt, a muted questioning of what was happening.

Then there rose the high shrieks of women; the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment Ron felt the earth shake beneath the car; the cliffs above trembled; and, beyond in the distance, he heard the loud crash of stone; an instant more and a mountainous cloud seemed to roll toward him, dark and rapid.

Lightning flashed violently as the first large drops of rain splattered on the windshield.

No longer did the crowd think of justice and Ron and Chandal and Kristy; safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to run—each dashing, pressing, crushing—amidst shrieks, and groans, the crowd vomited itself over the rocks and through the numerous crevices.

“Ron, help us!” Chandal pleaded. “Don’t let us die.”

Ron hit the accelerator again. The tires spun in their tracks.

Huge stones began to slide down the mountain, striking against each other as they fell, breaking into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their reach.

Below, the town had been set on fire, and at various intervals, the flames rose sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom of night and rain.

Above, wild, haggard, ghastly with fear, small groups encountered each other in the momentary flickering of torchlight, but without leisure to speak, to consult, to advise; for the rocks fell more frequently now, extinguishing their lights, and all hurried to seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter. Never on earth had the faces of men seemed so haggard— never had there been a race of people so stamped with horror and sublimity of dread.

Quickly Ron threw the car in reverse. The car hesitated a moment, the tires spinning, then lurched backward. That’s when the creature threw itself across the windshield so that its body lay directly across Ron’s line of vision. For an instant, he stared into its eyes, its blue eyes. Mirrors of hatred.

In that moment Ron paused, then smashed his foot down on the gas pedal. The car shot back; the creature rolled forward across the hood and landed in front of the car. Violently Ron threw the car into drive and hit the accelerator. He felt a slight thud as the tires crushed the body. The body, Ron knew, of Alister Carroll.

The groans of the dying were broken by wild shrieks of terror—now near—now distant. In a universe of pouring rain and falling stone was heard the rumbling of the earth below, and the horrible grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the mountains.

And then, in a sudden illumination, a burst of flames as the stone erupted, hurling a massive heap of rock and fire down upon the town, and the whole of Brackston’s civilization began to break apart.

Even after reaching the main highway miles away, Ron imagined he heard screams, an echo of screams, in the flickering destruction in the ultimate darkness, not quite screams perhaps, rather the roar of rage, the furious rage of trapped animals.

And then, and then—it was over, swiftly, abruptly over. The din, the lunacy of Brackston, the whole shattering experience, was done.

They drove through the night without stopping, without looking back, until finally they watched the changing landscape as it grew somehow less intense. Since the whole area was still covered with deep shadows, it was hard to tell, but it seemed to Ron that the earth had now become greener, softer.

And he knew, finally knew, that morning would come.