enough to snap our veins like rubber bands, but because it came from
behind us.
I was not aware of pulling my legs up, swiveling, gripping the roll bar,
and standing on my seat. I must have done so, and with the swift grace
of an Olympic gymnast, because that was where I found myself as the
scream reached a crescendo and abruptly cut off.
Likewise, I wasn’t consciously aware of Bobby grabbing the shotgun,
flinging open his door, and leaping out of the Jeep, but there he was,
holding the 12-gauge Mossberg, facing back the way we had come.
“Light, ” he said.
The spotlight was still in my hand. I clicked it on even as he spoke.
No missing link loomed behind the Jeep.
The knee-deep grass swooned as a bare whisper of wind romanced it.
If any predator had been trying to squirm toward us, using the grass as
cover, it would have disturbed the courtly patterns drawn by the gentle
caress of the breeze, and it would have been easy to spot.
The bungalow was one of those that lacked a porch, fronted only by two
steps and a stoop, and the door was closed. The three windows were
intact, and no boogeyman glowered at us from behind any of those dusty
panes.
Bobby said, “It sounded right here.”
“Like right under my butt.” He had a solid grip on the shotgun.
Looking around at the night, as creeped out as I was by the deceptive
peacefulness of it, he said, “This sucks.”
“It sucketh, ” I agreed.
A look of high suspicion crimped his face, and he backed slowly away
from the Jeep.
I didn’t know if he had glimpsed something under the vehicle or if he
was just operating on a hunch.
Dead Town was even more silent than its name implied. The faint breeze
was expressive but mute.
Still standing on the passenger seat, I glanced down along the side of
the Jeep, at the lazily undulating blades of grass. If some
foul-tempered freak erupted from beneath the vehicle, it could climb the
door and be at my neck before I would be able to locate either a
crucifix or an even halfway attractive necklace of garlic.
I needed only one hand for the spotlight. I slipped the Glock out of my
shoulder holster.
When Bobby had backed off three or four steps from the Jeep, he knelt on
one knee.
To throw a little light where he needed to peek, I held the spotlight
out of the Jeep and directed the beam toward the undercarriage on my
side, hoping to backlight whatever might be hiding there.
In the classic, wary half-kneel of the experienced monster hunter, Bobby
tilted his head and slowly lowered it to peer under the Jeep.
“Nada, ” he said.
“Zip? ”
“Zero.”
“I was stoked, ” I said.
“I was pumped.”
“Ready to kick ass.” We were Lying.
As Bobby rose to his feet, another scream tore the night, the same
scraping-fingernails-dying-cat-sobbing-child-malfunctioning-synthesizer
wail that had made us jump like lightning-struck cats only moments ago.
This time I had a better fix on the source of the scream, and I shifted
my attention to the bungalow roof, where the spotlight revealed Big
Head. There was no question now, This was the creature that Bobby had
called Big Head, because its head was undeniably big.
It was crouched at one end of the roof, right on the peak, maybe sixteen
feet above us, like Kong on the Empire State Building but recreated in a
direct-to-video flick that lacked the budget for a larger set, fighter
planes, or even a damsel in peril. With its arms covering its face as
though the sight of us hideous human beings frightened and disgusted it,
Big Head studied Bobby and me with radiant green eyes, which we could
see through the gap between its crossed arms.
Even though the beast’s face was covered, I could discern that the head
was disproportionately large for the body. I also suspected that it was
malformed. Malformed not just by human standards but surely by the
standards of monkey beauty, as well.
I couldn’t determine whether it had been spawned primarily from a rhesus