“Got to do…do you have some sort of outhouse?” she asked the older woman next to her. The woman pointed toward the cliff. “That way. Find your way by your nose.”
“What if I go up the other way?” asked Nanci. “Beyond where we parked the vehicles?”
“No!”
“All right, all right.”
“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. But we place a lot on keeping the whole of Newton clean and sweet. Anyone starts taking a dump in the wrong place, and we’re off to hell in a hand basket. See what I mean, Nanci?”
“Sure.”
“I could do with pumping ship, as well,” said Mac, standing up and stretching.
He and Nanci began to walk off together into the cool darkness beyond the fire. Three of the Newton men also rose and began to follow them.
But they had a slight lead, and Mac whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “What?”
“Just an uneasy feeling. No more. Said they got a lot of fish. I haven’t seen a boat around, and you couldn’t do anything off those rocks at the bottom of the cliff.”
“Guess not. What are—”
“Watch careful, Mac.”
The three villagers caught up to them, and they all walked amicably along together.
Nanci had been ready for some kind of attack as she squatted among the dead brush, but nothing happened.
“All right?” called Mac.
“Sure. You all go ahead. Find my own way back. Can’t miss the fire.”
She waited a couple of minutes longer, until she was sure that the three other men had returned with Mac. Then she pulled up her panties, fastened her trousers, and took the Heckler & Koch P-111 from its holster and began to move.
She didn’t head directly along the well-trodden trail, but skirted the outlying buildings toward the part of the community that the woman had seemed so keen for her to avoid.
Someone by the fire had begun to sing with a sweet, clear voice the ancient ballad “The Wagoner’s Lad.” Nanci ghosted through the dry, dead bushes, the barrel of the gun probing at the air ahead of her like the tongue of a hunting rattler.
“Now his wagons are loaded, and he’s pulling away,” the singer went on.
The vehicles were to her right, safely parked and locked. Beyond them a narrow trail, forking off the main road into the community, was just visible in the half light of the cloud-masked moon. Nanci glanced behind her and chose the least-taken path.
The wind was rising and the high tatters of cloud were moving quickly, bringing patches of darkness and then moments of brightness. Nanci sniffed, catching a smell and wrinkling her nose in distaste.
She paused. The ground opened ahead of her in what might have been an old quarry or some kind of refuse pit. But it lay in deep shadow like a black lake.
The song had ended behind her. Now there was an a cappella chant that she didn’t recognize.
Nanci took a deep breath. The short hairs at the nape of her neck were prickling, and every nerve was tense with the realization that something was grievously wrong.
The pink-tinted bushes around her crackled in the breeze, and the moon suddenly broke through, darting silver lances into the pit just ahead of her.
“Yes,” she breathed, realizing many things in that moment of ghastly horror.
Piles of stripped and mangled bones. Human bones. Flayed, eyeless skulls and splintered ribs, the flesh peeled off them. Sliced off the bones. Boiled off.
Cooked off.
Behind her, Nanci heard the sound of shouting.
Chapter Three
Jim Hilton froze there, halfway between the front entrance and the stairs.
“Please don’t try to do anything stupid,” the voice repeated.
“My mother didn’t raise any children who did anything stupid,” he replied.
There was a quiet chuckle. “Sounds good to me. Nice to meet up with someone whose brains haven’t gone into terminal meltdown as a result of Earthblood. Most folks let their guns or their knives do their talking for them.”
Jim didn’t think it was the right moment to mention that if he’d had the sense to be carrying the power Ruger, the speaker would be down and dying.