AS THE HUMAN CALLED SCOTT LANG'S screams echoed deliciously in the dark recesses of his stolen mind, Pitch studied the faces of the three dozen humans that he had just slaughtered. Torturing Lang, taking over his body, had provided him the control he needed to begin the Summoning.
Even now, he sensed the energies of the being or beings who had interfered with the Fend's intended assault upon the Earth. Those energies were strange, powerful, yet vaguely, disturbingly familiar.
He wasn't sure, could not be sure yet. But if what he suspected was true, he would require aid. He would need an army to fight the Fend and defeat his new enemies. The Horn had been stolen, hidden. Even his augmented senses were at a loss to discover its whereabouts.
But the world was in chaos. He had plenty of dread and horror to feed him the might that he craved, for now. He was growing stronger. Every murder, every act of hatred and violence that he committed lent him the darkest power.
As he stretched out his will to the farthest corners of the Earth, he touched the minds of those who stood ready to serve him. Even among the descendants of his enemies he had sensed the seeds of discontent. He had tended those seeds, offered them the grisly soil they needed in which to grow. He would require aid to attain his prize, and there were many beings here who were covetous of the power he wielded.
When he had marshaled his forces, he would seek out the Mekhaud -cith, the Horn. Then this world, and all the rest of The Peerless Empire would fall beneath his blood- tarred heel.
The Horn's power lay at the crux of his plans. Closing his eyes, Pitch cast his mind out into the void, searching across time and space for the location of the Horn.
He could feel its' presence, shining like a lantern in a sea of infinite darkness. But he was unable to locate the powerful talisman. An unknown power cloaked the Horn's whereabouts too completely. He could not penetrate that aura. Nor could he determine who it was who now possessed the weapon.
It seemed to move constantly across the width and breadth of the space-time continuum. Even as he focused his mind upon its presence, it vanished beyond the reach of his senses. With a gnashing of teeth, Pitch broke off the contact.
And for an unpleasant moment he felt fear, dark and sinuous, skitter like ice water up Scott Lang's spine. No one on this world should have the power to hide the Horn from his senses. Not even the Nagrath Say Morn who were his descendants could have concealed it so completely from his power.
Who then? he thought bitterly.
The power required to achieve such a feat could only have been mounted by one of the ancient ones, his forgotten peers among the vanished Ket, or possibly his hated cousins of Emen Caste. But they had vanished.
Maybe the Gaunt have returned to vex me once more, he thought. And the thought brought with it the despised dread he remembered from so long ago. But he could detect no sign of his former Masters anywhere upon this plane.
With a surge of anger, he shrugged away his doubts.
No matter. He would discover the location of the Horn. He would regain the full measure of his might and more. And then nothing would stand in his way.
With a shrug, he sent out the call, summoning to his aid all those who would serve him.
Then he was gone.
******
CHAPTER 30
The young woman was walking up the center lane of the dark highway. Jimmy pressed his foot down to accelerate past her. After the crazy man back in Illinois, they'd grown leery of meeting strangers on the road.
The woman turned and stared at them as they passed her on the left. Jenny had time to notice the boots on the woman's feet. They were army issue, black, with heavy treads on the soles. Jenny thought they looked much to big for the slender young woman.
As she looked back at the woman fading in the distance, Jenny felt a sudden, inexplicable desire to stop.
"Let's help her, Jimmy," she said.
Jimmy was lost in thought. The Daimler was running low on fuel, and his own arthritis was kicking up. His knuckles felt like someone had cracked them with a ruler.
"What?" he said. "Jenny, we can't stop every time we stumble across some nut who..."
"Jimmy, oh, she's just a girl, Jimmy," Jenny said. She was growing more adamant the further away from the woman they drove. "Maybe she's hurt."
"Jenny..."
"It's our duty as decent Christians to try and drag some hope out of this mess somehow, James Montague. We can start right here, with that girl."
Jimmy grumbled, unconvinced that Christian charity was the proper response to global conquest by alien invaders.
"Hell, if she's one of those things you think she cares about "decent Christians?" Or Muslims? Or Jews? Maybe she eats Episcopalians for breakfast."
"Oh stop being ridiculous," she chided.
In the end he relented, as he knew he must.
"All right," he groused. "But the minute her head spins around..."
"Jimmy..."
"...or she pulls out one of those Death Rays..."
"Oh, kiss me, you old hound," Jenny said.
She was grinning from ear to ear as he turned the Daimler around and headed back.
*
The woman was exhausted and hungry. She managed to climb in next to Jenny, squeezing the older woman so tightly that the two-seater suddenly became much less comfortable. Jenny and the young woman were sharing the passenger seat.
"Thank God this old girl is bigger than the modern two-seaters, Jimmy said too loudly. "We could never have made room in one of those flashy Japanese jobs."
Ignoring him, Jenny looked at the young woman.
"Where you headed, honey?" she asked.
The girl looked at the old couple for a moment before she spoke. Her voice, when it came, was heavy with exhaustion. Jimmy had to lean in to hear her.
"That way," she said, pointing in the direction of the setting sun. Jenny studied the girl carefully. Her strange manner and stilted, almost robotic speech pattern gave the older woman the impression that she was in shock.
Hell, you could say the same thing about everybody, Jenny thought.
"You got people out that way, dear? Family? Someone we could take you to?"
"I... have no family," the girl said. "Not here. Not... in this place."
Odd, Jenny thought.
She wondered if the girl had been injured in some way.
Maybe she's feeble in the head.
"What's your name, child?" she asked.
"Iris."
"Imus?" Jimmy hollered.
He had grown a little hard of hearing over the years. Jenny turned to correct him.
"Isis, dear," she told him.
"Iris," the girl corrected.
"Oh. Are you hungry, child? I know I am," Jenny said. "We were just going to look for a place to pull over."
At her words, Iris' eyes lit up.
"Yes," she said. "Yes I am. I'm very hungry."
"Well when was the last time you ate?" Jenny asked.
Iris' brows furrowed in concentration. Jenny thought the poor thing looked like she hadn't eaten in good long while. From the way she craned her head, as if the idea of eating was new to her, a person might have thought she'd never eaten in her whole life.
*
Night had fallen by the time they reached the empty house just off the highway. The place was set on an old dairy farm. As they knocked on the door, hoping to find a friendly face, Jimmy swore he could hear cows moaning in the fields behind the house. But no one answered.
Trying the door, Jimmy found that it was unlocked.
Against Jenny's wishes, Jimmy had pulled the gun from the glove compartment. As he walked into the kitchen, gun held at the ready, he looked warily around the room.
"You look ridiculous," Jenny said, brushing him out of the way. The young woman helped her bring the picnic basket indoors.
"Have to check for an ambush, woman," Jimmy said impatiently.
The place was dark, but Jenny had candles. The three of them ate from the picnic lunch that Jenny laid out for them. Supplies were tight, but they found enough in the cellar of the old house to make up for any shortages caused by the new girl's presence. They ate by candle light in the dining room of the old farmhouse. In the flickering circle of light, Jenny got a look at their odd passenger. She looked mulatto, or possibly Arab.
Maybe some kind of Latino, Jenny thought. But she wasn't sure.
Iris was pretty enough. Long, dark hair that fell in curly ringlets past her shoulders, an olive complexion that reminded Jenny of old Nick Loutas, the owner of the Greek restaurant over in Macomb. Sometimes, in the summer, Nick would work outdoors, cutting down dead trees for the locals or repairing rooftops damaged by tornado strikes. By midsummer, Nick could pass for a Mexican an Indian or a light-skinned black.
That's how this gal looks, Jenny thought.
The most striking thing about her, though, were her eyes. They were gray as windswept winter seas. Jenny thought the woman's eyes looked nearly white in the half-light thrown by the candles. They seemed to contain secret depths, mysterious, swirling vortices. It made Jenny a little uncomfortable to look directly into those stormy orbs. They seemed to see through her, sifting among her most guarded secrets.
After dinner, Jenny tried to pry information from the lips of their passenger. The young woman had barely spoken since she'd climbed into the Daimler. She looked to be about twenty years old, but Jenny couldn't really tell. There was something about the girl, some essence, which seemed at once youthful and ageless. She spoke very little. And she was either unwilling or unable to answer most of Jenny's questions.
Hmmph, just like Sandra, Jenny thought.
But she kept her thoughts turned away from the fate of her daughter, the youngest of their children.
The girl was tall and willowy. She had the lean look of a runway model. But she carried herself in a way that Jenny found disturbingly childlike. And again Jenny wondered if the girl had been raped or traumatized in some way.
Fool, she thought. Whole world's been traumatized.
The strange girl was staring out the kitchen window at the fields outside. Then without a word to either of them, Iris got up from the table and walked out onto the back porch.
"Told you," Jimmy whispered, his finger making a swirling gesture at his temple, and he jerked his thumb at the girl.
"Oh hush," Jenny hissed.
Quietly, she got up and walked to the back screen door. With a gasp, she gestured for Jimmy to come and see. Jimmy drew alongside her and together, the old couple looked out onto the porch at their odd passenger.
Iris' head was thrown back, her eyes shut tightly. Her arms were extended high above her head, her fingers reaching up toward the Iowa sky, as the moon rode along above them. She stretched, catlike, rising off her toes, as if she were trying to grasp the stars dancing over her head.
"Hmmph. Another nutcase," Jimmy said again, too loudly.
Then, without warning, the girl began to sing.
"She sheds her light, bright secrets told. Every living eye gathers her embrace. In limitless white, each path unfolds. Splendid, and terrible in her grace, each life a cry for peace. No answer from my mistress Moon. In icy silence her heart beats cold."
She repeated the words. It was a slow, almost sepulchral song, moving with the rhythm of a heartbeat, deep and steady. But Iris's light, tremulous alto seemed to lift the song, freeing it from its pendulous tempo.
Jenny realized she was holding her breath. Without knowing why, she felt a lump growing in her throat. She had no words to describe the mix of emotions that swept through her as she listened.
It was a simple song. But the sound of the girl's voice, filled with strange resonances, somehow suggested hidden harmonies, rich textures lying just below the surface of the words. It seemed as if a whole chorus now lifted their voices and sang into the Iowa night.
But there was only one singer.
Jenny looked down as Jimmy grasped her small nut-brown hand in his large, gnarled fist. She turned, as if in a daze, to look at Jimmy. His eyes were filled with tears.
Then she felt the wetness on her own cheeks. Together, they turned to stare at the girl as she serenaded the night, unafraid that she might see them.
But the strange singer was lost in contemplation of the uncaring moon.
*****
CHAPTER 31 (Pt...)
ON THEIR first day out of New York State, Alan, Stanford, Reed, Gordy Lundgren and Eugenia Fredericks passed by a famous man. The famous man was riding a beautiful horse. Gordy recognized the rider as a baseball star who had retired from the Major Leagues earlier that year.
The baseball player, who was also heavily armed, told them that the aliens had wiped out Greenwich, Westport and New Haven. He'd heard that they were moving north, into Hartford and up into Massachusetts.
Much of the surrounding area had fallen to marauders and roving bands of murderous looters. When Alan asked about the areas surrounding Mystic, near the old Aquarium where his father lived, the baseball player shrugged,
"The coastal areas have all been hit pretty hard," he said. "I don't know if your dad made it out or not, sorry to say."
Before they parted company, Gordy asked the man for his autograph.
Not long after they'd passed the baseball player, the travelers came upon what looked like an unoccupied house in the town of Naugatuck. But as they walked up the driveway to the small two-story home, someone from inside opened fire. One of the slugs narrowly missed Reed Maxwell.
Later, Stanford suggested arming everyone at the next possible opportunity. He also suggested that walking would limit their options if they needed to make a quick getaway. A car, or cars, would allow them greater mobility.
Both these needs were met, near the town of Cheshire.
They had been walking for two nights when they came to a police station in the business district. The area surrounding the Richmond Avenue station had evidently been the scene of a massacre.
The dead adorned the streets like macabre jewels, sprawled across cars, along the sidewalks and doorsteps up and down the length of the block. Many of the bodies showed evidence of torture, many had been mutilated. In many places, pools of blood still shone wetly in the moonlight. Guns, knives, even blood- drenched gardening tools lay everywhere.
"Looks like some sort of militia," Alan said quietly.
"Yeah," Stanford replied. "I wonder who they were fighting? It looks like some of them attacked each other at one point."
Behind them, Alan could hear Eugenia being violently ill behind a nearby car. After making sure there were no marauders in range, they went into the station house in search of whatever supplies they could scrounge.
Inside the station, the destruction was worse.
"Jesus," Stanford breathed.
Twelve men lay slaughtered inside the police station, their bodies torn apart with inhuman cruelty. Stanford and the others refused to venture further into the station house. All that is, except for Alan Whitmore. He remained in the doorway, staring at the scene, fiercely engraving its' imagery in the place behind his eyes as if he were trying to sear the images forever into the meat of his brain.
After ten minutes Eugenia called him away, finally screamed at him, calling him a "morbid asshole" before stalking back to the others.
But Alan wasn't morbidly observing the slaughter. He was adding names and faces to an ever-expanding list of people for whom he planned to extract an answer from the Yloi. And before he would allow them to leave Richmond Avenue, Alan and Gordy had gathered every firearm they could carry.
They found the car the next night, a brand new Ford Expedition. It was sitting in the three -car garage of a big Colonial outside Cheshire. The Expedition was big enough to carry the five of them comfortably, and rugged enough to take them off-road if the need arose. And the gas gauge showed that the big vehicle's fuel tank was nearly full.
The family who owned the home was still sitting in the BMW next to the Ford, a woman and three small children. They were all dead.
Stanford noted the rag that had been stuffed into the tailpipe of the car. The gas tank of the BMW was empty; keys still in the ignition. The mother had apparently started the engine. Then she and both children had simply crawled inside, curled up together and gone to sleep.
With the Ford, they made better time to Mystic.
*
When they got to the house, they found the door standing wide open. A series of strange vertical gouges, like scorch marks, marred the walls on either side of the door.
No one spoke. No one had to. They had all seen such markings on many of the homes along the Hudson River and into Connecticut; empty, ransacked, their occupants either forcibly removed, or fled.
Or murdered, a voice whispered darkly in Alan's ear.
He stepped across the threshold and into the home in which he'd spent much of his childhood. The living room had been trashed. There was broken glass all over the dusty hardwood floors, and every stick of furniture had been smashed. An armoire that had once held a large- screen television had been pushed over. Video discs and DVD's lay strewn all over the floor.
"Look at this," Gordy said from the next room.
Alan and the others followed his voice into the dining room. The wall there had been ruptured. A huge, circular hole, also scorched around its' edges, let the moonlight in from outside. Alan could see into the back yard from where he stood.
"Pop?" Alan called out.
But there was only silence in reply.
They searched the rest of the house. Oddly, the upper floors had been left essentially untouched, with one chilling exception. His parents' bedroom door had been smashed nearly off its' hinges. The master bedroom had been ransacked. But there was no way of knowing whether the marauders were human or alien.
The others waited downstairs until Alan satisfied himself that no one was there.
Reed came up and placed a hand on his shoulder, but Alan moved sharply away from the contact as if her touch burned.
"Let's secure the house and bed down for the day," he said.
"We've got to be ready."
*
He was running for his life.
Alan was in a field, somewhere outside Los Angeles with his father. Solomon stood next to him, somehow keeping pace effortlessly, as Alan scrambled frantically to escape the thing that pursued them both.
But there was something terribly wrong with Solomon Whitmore's face.
When Alan let himself look closely at Solomon, he saw that half the old man's head had been blasted away. His skull showed through the torn meat of his scalp. A flap of skin hung, dripping blood into Solomon's remaining eye. Blood and brains stained the front of his white shirt. It was the same shirt he'd worn the day they buried Alan's mother.
Can't stop running though. Got to get to...
He didn't know where or to whom he was running. All he knew was that he had to get there before he was caught.
"Better pick up the pace, son," Solomon said. "He's gaining on you."
Alan turned to look over his shoulder.
In the distance, he could make out a figure steadily drawing closer. The man was inhumanly tall and thin. Oddly, the pursuer wore a black long coat and a tall black hat.
With a jolt, Alan recognized the tall man.
His parents had taken the family to London for a vacation when he was ten years old. They'd gone to see The Three- Penny Opera, which was playing in the West End. At one point during the play, one of the actors, wearing the tall, black hat and long black coat of an Edwardian era undertaker, had appeared unexpectedly next to Alan's seat on the aisle. Alan had received a terrible fright when the tall, cadaverous looking actor leaned down and leered at him as he spoke his lines.
Later, back at their hotel, his parents had laughed the incident off. But Alan had suffered nightmares for years afterward. Inevitably, the figure at the center of those nightmares was the "Three- Penny Man," the actor from the play.
That same creature was here and pursuing Alan even now.
He looked to his father for strength.
"This time, I'm gonna let him get yooou boy!" Solomon howled. "The Three-Penny Man is gonna take you down into the root cellar with him and never... let... you... go!" With inhuman speed and strength he reached out and grabbed Alan's bicep. His touch burned like acid.
Alan screamed.
*
To Be Continued...