30. Another One Bites the Dust (D1)

__ Ardy's breath came in short chopped clouds as she strained to hear signs of activity outside the car. The driver's side door still stood open and, despite the Datsun's chugging heater, the air had grown frigid.
__ Long moments passed without a sound or source of movement. Her ears had stopped ringing after the popping gunfire. She knew the police officer was planning to gun down Doug, afraid he was going to transform into some sort of monster. Then, she recalled, he did.
__ Something happened to him. He charged the cop screaming like a mad man possessed.
__ Now he was--.
__ "Doug!"
__ Ardy struggled for a moment with the handle on her own door before throwing it open and charging out into the street. A light snow was replacing the black rain but it was not yet sticking to anything. Perhaps the deep summer earth was still too warm to accept this strange turn to the weather. The red and blue lights on top of the police cruiser still thrashed the surrounding forest chasing black shadows away. The car the officer had stopped still sat diagonally across Henderson street. And no one, not a soul, seemed to care.
__ She fumbled around the back of the car, almost slipping on the wet pavement, and stared at the most bizarre scene yet from the past eighteen hours.
__ The officer lay on his back, a dark hole under his chin, burned around the edges from his own weapon. Over him stood Doug. Doug... was worse off.
__ Though he stood his vision was blank, glazed over. Two dark holes decorated his head: one on his forehead slightly to the left, the other had ruptured his right cheekbone. Another dark hole stained his polo shirt just over his heart.
__ He was dead, had to be. But here he stood gazing blankly toward the sky, his eyes as unseeing as those of a mannequin.
__ "Oh, my God, Doug! No!" Ardy ran a couple of steps toward him but stopped. Something wasn't right here. Well, of course something wasn't right, but she felt something was actually horribly, horribly wrong. Something else was here, something far worse than anything she had seen on earth.
__ But maybe not in hell.


__ Munson stared at the figure through the frosted windshield. It appeared to be a shirtless teenager, his upper body rippling with muscles. The kid, if you could call him that, was staring down at Clye Morrow's body. He was breathing heavily as if he had just run here a great distance. The kid didn't seem to care about the car, whether or not anyone was in it staring at him. He was fixed on the body at his feet.
__ He couldn't let the opportunity wait. Munson had also seen the gun in his hand, a rough looking .357. It was past time to wonder where Maggie got her information, where Ardy was, or what he would do now that he couldn't redeem himself through Clye Morrow. Moving with the quick reflexes and killer instinct that fed his bloodlust just eighteen hours earlier, Munson opened the driver's side door and dove-rolled into the dark forest, kicking the door shut behind him.
__ The kid responded as expected. He leveled the pistol toward the sound and squeezed off a shot, then another. The reports echoed through the frosted forest.
__ That's two, Munson thought. Four to go.

__ "Who are you?" Ardy called. "What have you done with Doug?"
__ The dead-Doug marionette twitched before leveling its blank gaze on her. "Doouugg?" it hissed.
__ A chill colder than this freakish night-day vibrated through Ardy. She had heard that sound before, that hissing cold voice. That was the voice of him -- the lowercase him. The him of darkness and anti-love. The him who hated Him.
__ "Leave him alone! This is not your place!"
__ The Doug-thing twitched again. Ardy could swear one of his eyes had started to focus.
__ "Noooooooo," it hissed. Doug-thing took a staggering step back, raised its hands and smacked at its own face. Then, in Doug's own voice, "Noooo!"
__ A tiny black metal slug dropped from his forehead and tick-ticked on the pavement.
__ "Doug! Fight it! Fight it! Come back to me!"
__ "I will take your Doug with me," he hissed at Ardy, "To the place you came from. Then you will follow by your own-- No!" Another twitch. More like a seizure.
__ "I love you!" Ardy screamed, hot tears welling in her cold eyes.
__ That did the trick.

__ The rock Munson hurled arched perfectly through the darkness and clocked the kid on the temple. The boy didn't flinch. The rock just tousled his hair and dropped with a thump.
__ Super boy turned toward the rock's trajectory and fired his pistol again. Two thunderous booms shook the bark of the trees around them.
__ That leaves two, Munson counted, and rolled to his left, further from the car.
__ But this time the boy didn't fall for it. He smiled wryly and said, "Oh, no you don't. I know what you're trying to do."
__ Munson froze. Panic started to build in his chest, it stoked his muscles for the charge he knew would come.
__ "Fine," the kid said, "I'll just have to waste your girlfriend." He then turned, aimed for the passenger side of the car, and fired his last two shots. Spiderwebs of safety glass cascaded out from the dime-sized holes that drew a direct line to Maggie's position in the passenger seat.
__ "No!" Munson screamed. Anguish and loss flooded through him but he didn't care. He only knew he had to stop this kid, avenge the girl.
__ But the boy was too fast and knew what would happen. In one smooth move, he dropped the empty .357 in the mud at his feet and, while whirling on Munson's position, drew the .22 pistol tucked in the back of his pants and leveled it at Munson's throat.
__ R. Lee Munson actually heard the three shots and felt them tear through his neck.
__ Then he was gone again.

__ Ardy stood shivering so badly her teeth chattered and her vision blurred. "Doug?"
__ Doug stood about eight feet from her. He too was shaking, his eyes wide. "I-Is it gone?"
__ She shrugged, "I d-don't know. I-I'm n-not sure."
__ Tears streaked his face, "W-Where was I, Ardy? W-Where d-d-did it take me?"
__ Ardy's chin puckered. She knew where he had been. She recognized the look in Doug's eyes. It was the same look Munson had when he was brought back from the brink of hell.
__ "Ardy!?" It was a scream. A scream of absolute fear and anguish. "Why is it so dark!? Why is it so cold!?" Doug collapsed onto the pavement hugging himself. The three slugs that had ended his life lay scattered on the road. The dark shadow that had taken hold of him was gone.
__ Ardy ran to him and embraced him. He was as cold as the road and his shivers were racked by his heavy sobs and screams of anguish.
__ "It took me, Ardy," Doug snorted. "It took me away from God. I can't go back there. Please don't let me go back there!"
__ "Sssh, love. Sssh. I won't. I promise I won't let it take you again." She petted his head now wet with melted drops of sleety snow. "I-It's okay, my love. We'll be okay. I w-won't let-t it come again."
__ Doug's cries, like Munson's the night before, were filled with the darkest kind of knowing, the deepest hardest truth to learn.
__ All she could do was hold him and rock him. All she could wonder was what had taken hold of him and why. And why it had let him go. And if R. Lee were okay out there in the darkness of Palley's Woods.