There was a sudden noise, like a huge bolt of silk tearing, and a man in one of the huddled groups of Newtowners collapsed, spinning to the dirt, arms and legs flailing, his lifeblood spurting out, as if he’d just been possessed by the demonic beat of a different and deathly drummer.
Nanci was just out of range of the firelight, crouching behind the stump of a big fallen yew tree, a Port Royale machine pistol on full-auto in her hands. Her H&K P-111 was back in its holster, ready for use as a backup weapon.
Now all the firearms came into play. Mac leveled and fired, eyes screwed up against the pungent smoke from the blazing logs. Paul and Pamela were on either side of him, Jeanne just beyond them. And Jeff Thomas, standing spread-legged, blasted off with his captured .38.
It ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Stop shooting!” Nanci Simms’s voice was clear and penetrating as a cavalry bugle call, ringing through the night.
Predictably Jeff Thomas was the only one of the group who ignored her order, firing twice more at one of the younger women, who was a vanishing blur, running screaming toward the rocks and the ocean.
Mac’s first quick guess was that over half of the community was either dead or dying. He could see and hear three or four more who were rolling around with gunshot wounds. The few survivors of the cannibalistic commune had disappeared into the surrounding scrub.
The only sound was the moaning of the injured. And then the click of Nanci’s boot heels on the pebbles as she stepped out of the shadows, as calm as if she’d come across the last moments of a Presbyterian Church July picnic.
“Finish them, Jeff,” she said, pointing with the muzzle of the machine pistol at the trio of wounded. “Don’t waste bullets. Cut their throats.”
Both Sukie and Jocelyn stood up and walked with the ex-reporter, wanting to watch what he did. As he knelt down beside the first writhing victim and quickly drew the blade of the butcher’s knife he’d taken from one of the corpses across his neck, Jeanne rushed up, horrified, to whisk the children away. One by one Jeff did away with the wounded, pulling away from the gushing fountains of blood that pattered black in the firelight.
“That it?” asked Pamela McGill.
Nanci nodded. “Doubt any of them’ll come back. It was a real neat killing.”
Paul McGill was already working his way around the bodies, checking for weapons and ammo. He looked back over his shoulder. “More of a bloody massacre,” he sang.
“Were they really… ?” Jeanne found herself unable to even say the taboo word.
“They were cannibals,” said Nanci flatly. “Had some suspicions, and then I found their bone pit.”
Pamela dropped to her knees. “Then that stew they said was pork… ?”
“Wasn’t pork,” replied her father.
The young woman vomited copiously and noisily, followed by Jocelyn as she realized the abhorrent meal they’d eaten. Sukie was fortunately too young to appreciate it, but she also knelt down and imitated them, making violent puking sounds.
“Shouldn’t we go after them while they’re running and wipe the sick-minded sons of bitches off the good earth?” asked Jeanne McGill. “I’ll be real happy to be the one to throw the switch on them right now.”
Nanci was reloading the Port Royale. “No point. Thing you have to learn and live with, Jeanne, is that the world has changed. What went around came around. The good old rules aren’t any good anymore. Just old. The times have been a’changing, and you can’t just get away with blocking windows and then sitting hopefully out in your hall.” She worked the bolt on the gun with a distant, practiced ease.
“You must understand that if you’re to be any use to your husband and your children. Do you see? Because seeing is the first step toward understanding.”
“No. Truth is, Miss Simms, Nanci, I don’t actually understand a single fucking thing anymore. I see dead plants every moment of every waking day. I have already seen more bodies in the last months than the average mortician would see in an entire lifetime. Seen my children die. Pulled the trigger and blown living flesh into gray corpses.”