Blood Red

“You can’t. I bet if I hit you in the head enough times you won’t go getting all better.”

Danny was doing his thing again, looking far away and keeping his aim on Soulis.

“It’s possible. Are you willing to take that risk?”

“Danny over there is ready. So am I.”

“What about your little friend?” He looked over to where Jayce was protected against Danny’s side. “If we call this done, I will let her live.”

“For all I know, she’s already an orphan. Maybe she’d want to be with her family.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a man as stubborn as you.” He had more to say, but just at that moment, Pee Wee opened up and started firing bullets into his chest and head. Six bullets at point-blank range blew holes into the monster with the human face, and Boyd and Danny took that as their cue. Danny moved his hand ever so slightly and pulled the trigger. Jason Soulis’s left eye exploded. An instant later his right eye followed suit. The next bullet took off the top of his skull and the one after that blew his jaw away.

Boyd focused on his chest. He had four glazer shells left and he used every last one of them aiming for where the heart should be.

Jason Soulis took enough lead to blow his body into pieces. What remained of him fell down and stayed down.

Pee Wee fell too, screaming again and crab-walking backward away from the remains.

Boyd loaded his weapon again and stepped closer. He fired every round into the body. Danny stayed where he was trying to calm down the hysterical girl in his arm. Williamson scooted a bit further away and started vomiting.

Boyd stared down at the corpse and waited for something to happen. He wanted to see if what was left would grow back again. Finally, convinced that nothing was going to happen, he moved toward the squad car leaning against the fire engine. Maybe if he was lucky there would be a can of gas he could use to burn the remains.

“Richie!” Danny’s voice got his attention and he spun, ready to fire again. The fog was lifting, fading away, and as it did he saw them coming. The crows. He couldn’t begin to count how many there were. They filled the air around them, and Boyd did the only sensible thing and backed away. Danny was ahead of him in that department and Pee Wee was leaving the area as fast as he could while still puking.

The birds circled briefly and then landed on the remains of Jason Soulis. They attacked what was there violently, plucking and ripping at the flesh and cloth, tearing away cold pieces of flesh and eating them.

Danny held the little girl in his arms and made sure she didn’t see what was happening.

There were a lot of the black birds and they were hungry. By the time they were finished there was little to look at except for the ruined clothes Soulis had been wearing.

“Well. That was disgusting.” Danny’s voice was weak.

“Yeah.”

“Red Lady?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

“Red Lady.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

They left, not a one of them having any desire to stay for another moment.

Chapter 24

I

The sun rose at the usual time, but it rose on a very different town than the one it had set on the night before.

Bodies littered the streets and lay scattered through several buildings as well. When they could finally get there, the state patrol vehicles rolled into Black Stone Bay and began cataloguing the damage.

The bodies of three priests were found at the Sacred Hearts Cathedral. They were found badly beaten, with their throats torn open. Someone had taken the time to write “Forgive them, Lord, they were only human” on the walls in the blood of the three men. Similar epitaphs were found in every single house of God in the town.

While the crimes were added to the list of damages inflicted, the details of the bloody notes were not made public. The matter of finding replacements for the priests, rabbis, ministers, and administrators of the various religious establishments was handled quietly and carefully. There might have been more scandal added to the issue, but with everything else that occurred that particular Halloween night and a few carefully worded comments from higher ups in the churches, the matter was left alone.

Over half of the police force was dead or missing. All four detectives were still alive, though two of them had been holed up in a bank vault overnight. They were found when the bank opened in the morning, both of them disheveled and very, very angry. Though they were vague about details, it seemed that an informant had gotten the drop on them. Sadly for him, he didn’t realize that there was proper circulation in the vault and that, in fact, being locked inside would not cause suffocation. He was arrested as he was packing his bags for an extended vacation.