From a Buick 8(62)

Curt and Tony unpinned the monstrosity from the corkboard. They put it back in the evidence bag. All but two of the black pellets followed, swept into the evidence bag with a fingerprint brush. This time Curt made sure the seal on the bag was tight all the way across the top. 'Is Arky still around?' he asked.

Tony said, 'No. He wanted to stay, but I sent him home.'

'Then would one of you go upstairs and ask Orv or Buck to start a fire in the incinerator out back? Also, someone needs to put a pot of water on the stove. A big one.'

'I'll do it,' Sandy said, and after ejecting the tape from Huddie's videocam, he did.

While he was gone, Curt took swabs of the viscid black stuff which had come out of the thing's gut and uterus; he also swabbed the thinner white fluid from the chest organ. He covered each swab with Saran Wrap and put them into another evidence bag. The two remaining unborn creatures with their tiny wings wrapped around them (and their unsettling one-eyed stares) went into a third evidence bag. Curt worked competently, but with no zest, much as he would have worked a cold crime-scene.

The specimens and the bat-thing's flayed body eventually wound up in the battered green cabinet, which George Morgan took to calling 'the Troop D sideshow'. Tony allowed two of the Troopers from upstairs to come down when the pot of water on the stove had reached a boil. The five men donned heavy rubber kitchen gloves and scrubbed down everything they could reach. The unwanted organic leftovers went into a plastic bag, along with the scrub-rags, surgical gloves, dental masks, and shirts. The bag went into the incinerator and the smoke went up to the sky, God the Father, ever and ever, amen.

Sandy, Curtis, and Tony took showers ? long enough and hot enough to exhaust the tank downstairs not once but twice. After that, rosy-cheeked and freshly combed, they ended up on the smokers' bench.

'I'm so clean I almost squeak,' Sandy said.

'Squeak this,' Curt replied, but amiably enough.

They sat and just looked at the shed for awhile, not talking.

'A lot of that shit got on us,' Tony said at last. 'Lot of that shit.' Overhead, a three-quarter moon hung in the sky like a polished rock. Sandy could feel a tremble in the air. He thought maybe it was the seasons getting ready to change. 'If we get sick ? '

'I think if we were going to get sick, we'd be sick already,' Curt said. 'We were lucky. Damn lucky. Did you boys get a good look at your peepers in the bathroom mirror?'

They had, of course. Their eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, the eyes of men who have spent a long day fighting a brushfire.

'I think that'll go away,' Curt said, 'but I believe wearing those masks was probably a damn good idea, after all. They're no protection against germs, but at least none of that black crap got in our mouths. I think the results of something like that might have been quite nasty.'

He was right.

CHAPTER 6

NOW:

Sandy

The sandwiches were gone. So was the iced tea. I told Arky to get ten bucks out of the contingency fund (which was kept in a jar in the upstairs closet) and go down to Finn's Cash and Carry. I thought two sixpacks of Coke and one of root beer would probably carry us through to the end.

'I do dat, I miss d'part about d'fish,' Arky said.

'Arky, you know the part about the fish. You know all the parts of this story. Go on and get us some cold drinks. Please.'

He went, firing up his old truck and driving out of the parking lot too fast. A man driving that way was apt to get a ticket.

'Go on,' Ned said. 'What happened next?'

'Well,' I said, 'let's see. The old Sarge became a grandfather, that was one thing. It probably happened a lot sooner than he wanted it to, baby born out of wedlock, big hooraw in the family, but everyone eventually calmed down and that girl has gone on to Smith, which is not a bad place for a young lady to get her diploma, or so I understand. George Morgan's boy hit a home run in tee-ball and George went around just about busting his buttons, he was so proud. This was I think two years before he killed the woman in the road and then killed himself. Orvie Garrett's wife got blood poisoning in her foot and lost a couple of toes. Shirley Pasternak came to work with us in 1984  ? '

'1986,' she murmured.

"86 it was,' I said, and patted her knee. 'There was a bad fire in Lassburg around that same time, kids playing with matches in the basement of an apartment house. Just goofing. No supervision. When someone says to me that the Amish are crazy to live like they do, I think about that fire in Lassburg. Nine people killed, including all but one of the kids in the basement. The one who got out probably wishes he hadn't. He'd be sixteen now, right around the age boys are generally getting good and interested in girls, and this kid probably looks like the lead actor in a burn-ward production of Beauty and the Beast. It didn't make the national news ? I have a theory that multiple-fatality apartment housefires only make the news if they happen at Christmas ? but it was bad enough for these parts, thank you very much, and Jackie O'Hara got some terrible burns on his hands, helping out. Oh, and we had a Trooper ? James Dockery, his name was ? '

'Docker-ty,' Phil Candleton said. "T. But you're forgiven, Sarge, he wasn't here more than a month or two, then he transferred over to Lycoming.'

I nodded. 'Anyhow, this Dockerty won a third prize in the Betty Crocker Bakeoff for a recipe called Golden Sausage Puffs. He got ribbed like a motherf*cker, but he took it well.'