On the field, one little drummer was still drumming. Every other human in the stadium turned and tried to run.
Benches tumbled. Rails bent and broke.
Sugar sprinted for the locker rooms.
Mack had turned off the road that ran through downtown Taper, and they were coming up on the stadium. The glow was just ahead. Soon, he would glimpse the scoreboard and the score of the first game that he should have been coaching. Soon, he would have to decide what to do next.
Natalie was now in the passenger seat beside him. Molly was awake in the back, writhing in her car seat, fighting straps and buckles.
Natalie began to sing quietly, and her voice made Mack ache. Molly calmed in the back. Her breathing grew slow and steady.
Mack’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out and tossed it to Natalie. She looked at it and nodded, still humming. Mack pushed a button on the steering wheel and a voice barked through the car speakers.
“Mack?” It was the assistant coach.
“I’m here, Steve,” Mack said. “You hear anything from Charlie?”
“Hear anything?” Steve said. “I saw him, and so did every other person in town. He chased a panther across the field just before halftime. A full-grown panther, Mack. Sugar turned up, too, and he’s trying to tell me some crazy story about monsters and dead people and all sorts of stuff I don’t have time to hear.”
Natalie grabbed Mack’s hand. “He’s all right? Charlie’s all right?”
“Don’t know about that,” Steve said. “Depends on whether he caught that panther. Pray he didn’t, I guess. He’s gone now.”
“We’re outside the stadium,” Mack said. They were approaching the parking lot, and passed a checkpoint and four cop cars with their lights spinning. But no cops in sight. “Get back to the guys. I’ll be there in two ticks.”
“No!” Steve said. “Stay in your car. Steer clear. That’s why I was calling. There’s a riot going in the stadium, man. Chaos. We’re locked inside the locker room. Big Surge is holding the door. I … ev—” Steve’s voice was swallowed up by shouting.
Mack turned into the parking lot and stopped. People were flooding over destroyed turnstiles, fighting on the roof of the concession stand. Boys were standing on cars, stomping in windshields. A few of them looked up at Mack’s headlights. They jumped off and started toward them.
Mack threw the car in reverse and backed into the road. He spun the car around, shifted, and punched the gas.
Molly began to cry.
“Steve!” Mack yelled.
“Getting rough in here,” Steve crackled. “Couple hurt. Idiot kids.”
“Did Sugar say where Charlie was going? Did he have any idea?”
“To kill some mother,” Steve said. “But mostly he’s jabbering about Stanks or Grens or something and how they’re making everyone crazy. Hey, hey, hey! No! You two shut your mouths—”
The line went dead.
Mack stepped on the brakes. Gren … He’d heard that word. Like everyone who’d been a kid in the muck, he’d heard some crazy stories. And he’d had dreams that Mrs. Wisdom had blamed on the moon. On the wind. Or some smell.
There was a memory in his mind somewhere, blurry and distant. A bad memory.
A panther. He knew who had panthers. That much was encouraging.
“Mack?” Natalie’s face was stone. Mack called it her game face.
“You have your phone?” Mack asked. His wife nodded as she handed his back. Mack kissed her. He kissed his fingers and twisted around to rub them on Molly’s cheek in the backseat. “Lock the doors and keep moving. Stay on the edge of town, but in the light. I might need a ride in a hurry. Don’t let anyone near the car. Not even cops. No one.”
“What are you going to do?”
Mack opened his door and stepped into the road. “Charlie was just here. Wait for my call.”
Natalie slid over the console between the seats and dropped in behind the steering wheel. Her eyes were wide, but her jaw was set. She nodded. Mack kissed her again and shut the door. Molly watched him as the Rover rolled away.
Two hundred yards behind him, cop cars were being smashed. He could hear the helicopter returning.
Mack left the road, hopped a ditch, and cut through the tall grass, jogging toward the stadium.
Charlie had watched the Mother disappear. He had watched the one remaining Gren grab Lio’s body by the ankle and drag it through the brush after her.
The stink had lessened, but it wasn’t gone. And so he had held still, the panther beside him. But he wasn’t here to hide. He was here to find. To hunt.
And then he heard it—cane crackling behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw stripes of red fire between the stalks. The stink suddenly grew and quick, muddy feet with jagged toes slid around the corner of the field. A rough hand was plunging a torch into the low cane leaves as the feet ran.
The panther slipped quickly forward and out of the field. Charlie flinched back, deeper into the cane.
The torch dove in beneath his face and then was gone. Dry leaves sprang into fiery life and quickly formed a wall. Heat billowed around Charlie as the cane popped and the wet leaves above him hissed and steamed.
Charlie wasn’t a rabbit, he couldn’t run from this. He threw his arms over his face and plunged through the fire, tumbling onto the road beside the canal.
Farther down the road, the Stank with the torch had stopped and was watching him. He was wearing a hood of skunks and rats and snakes over baggy mud-caked jeans. He was skinny. Young. In one hand he held the torch, and in the other a long wooden spike.
With a start, Charlie realized his shorts were on fire. He jumped to his feet and slapped them out.
Across the fields, over by the church, he heard shouts and then a gun fired twice. A third time. Charlie looked around and saw that this was not the only field burning. Everywhere, smoke and steam were rising. The tallest flames of all were licking the church.
The young Stank bent his knees and crept slowly forward, as if Charlie couldn’t see him.
Charlie backed away, unslinging his bag. “I can see you. I can. You’re not sneaking up on me.” He pulled the long bone knife out of the cloth and out of his bag. It was hot against his skin.
Charlie dropped the bag and slid a little closer to the canal. “Come on!” he shouted. “Do I need a red cloth or something? Let’s go!”
Between two heartbeats, the young Stank charged.
Charlie had a simple plan. Drop to the ground. Kick the Gren with both feet. Flip him into the canal. He managed to drop onto his back. The Gren raked the torch across his bare shins and stepped around Charlie’s kick. He plunged the thick spike down at Charlie’s chest. Charlie twisted clear of the blow, shoving the bone knife up at the Stank’s mud-covered stomach.
An engine roared and lights flashed. The Stank turned as a red truck with lights lining its roll bar bounced out from between two fields and slid almost to the canal. The driver jumped out and climbed onto the roof of the cab. He was wearing a denim jacket and a trucker’s cap. A shotgun was strapped to his shoulder, and he carried a hunting rifle with a scope. Long, stringy hair hung out of the back of his hat.
He aimed and fired back into the fields at something Charlie couldn’t see. Aimed and fired. Aimed and fired. The Gren above Charlie snarled and ran at the lights and the noise.
“Look out!” Charlie shouted as the Gren leapt onto the hood. The man spun and his rifle cracked. The Gren tumbled to the ground, his fur hood snagging on the truck’s fender. The man turned and fired again, back into the field.
Charlie ran forward. He grabbed the still-moving Stank by the ankles and dragged him out of his hood, toward the canal. Without the rotting animal skins, the Stank was suddenly very human—a filthy, skinny teenage boy, furious and confused.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Charlie said. “You didn’t want it, and if you did, you shouldn’t’ve.”
The Stank saw the water and his con
fusion disappeared. He jerked a foot free and kicked Charlie in the jaw. He twisted onto his hands and knees and tried to run, but Charlie landed on his back. He hugged the young Gren’s arms tight to his sides and drove his face into the ground.
“I saw her,” Charlie said. “She’s not your mother.”
The boy twisted and kicked but Charlie held on.
“The water will take it away. It will all stop. You won’t belong to her.”
The man on the truck was shouting and his gun was firing and fields were burning, but all Charlie cared about was one boy who didn’t have to be a monster.
The Gren stopped fighting, his body seeming to shake with the effort. Then, as quiet as a ghost, he gasped one word into the earth.
“Please.”
Charlie rolled with him over the bank and into the canal.
In the cool water, Charlie let go. His feet found the bottom and he kicked up to the surface. The boy surfaced beside him. He didn’t speak. He didn’t claw for the bank like the old man had. He looked at Charlie. His eyes were at peace. And then they closed.
Metal crunched and screamed. The red truck slid sideways toward the canal—the Gren were flipping it. The man on the roof jumped for the water as the truck rolled up and over.
Charlie grabbed a breath and dove. Bright lights on a roll bar exploded past his face. The cab roof slammed him down, pinned his legs to a log, and pinned the log to the bottom.
A gator wriggled out from underneath the log, jerking and thrashing to get its tail free. Charlie felt its back against his own, its claws against his arm, and then it was gone. But he wasn’t.
I’d rather die than not try.
Charlie bubbled his lungs empty. He fought, but fighting was pointless. It was a truck. He stared past his legs at the lights, wondering how long they would keep shining. He already wanted them off. So he shut his eyes.
Mack crouched in the shadows next to the bleachers. Most of the fans were gone, and those who weren’t were tangled in the bleachers or sprawled on the ground.
An awful reek floated across the turf like cold air. When it reached him, Mack’s skin tightened and disgust washed through him. This stupid town and all its petty people deserved everything they were getting. Disgust boiled toward anger, but Mack was already closing iron fists of self-control around the first surprise attack of feeling.
He’d had a lot of practice. This was game time, and he never played angry. When other men cracked, he was a rock. When opponents burned with fiery rage, Mack was searing cold. He could find clarity and yawn calm even when a hundred thousand people were screaming at him and cameras were in his face, spying for tens of millions more.
Mack stayed focused.
The helicopter was hovering over the field, scanning it with its spotlight, which was pointless with the stadium lights on. A group of cops—traffic, state troopers, gang-unit guys in fatigues and flak jackets, maybe fifteen in all—had circled up with backs together on the far sideline. They were terrified and arguing, but one man in fatigues seemed to be in some sort of control, his dark shaved head glistening and his booming orders drowning out complaints and arguments.
Fast dark shapes with bare feet and fur hoods moved fluidly through the bleachers above the cops. More danced past them in the grass, reversing direction just before a gun fired, darting in and slashing at legs and tumbling away again.
Mack turned and looked toward the locker room. He hoped Steve still had the boys inside, and that they were all still sane.
A cold gun barrel tapped him on the back of the neck.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Spitz said behind him. “My night might look up after all.”
Mack rose slowly, hands up, and turned. Spitz looked bad. His visor was gone and he had a lump on his forehead ready to hatch into something the size of a turkey. His nose was broken, and while the bleeding had stopped, it had already turned his mustache into a fat, hairy scab. His pants were torn and sagging.
“Leroy, what are you doing?” Mack said. He gestured at the group of cops near the bleachers. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“Them,” Spitz said. “Those fools. Hydrant is with them. Them is where every mindless numbskull like you should be. I’m with me.”
“Hiding under the bleachers?” Mack asked. “People need your help, Spitz.”
Spitz waggled his gun. “Oh, shut up. How many millions of dollars did you get to play football? How many parties and cars and houses?”
Mack didn’t answer.
“Know how many I got?” Spitz asked. “Zero. Zeeeer to the O. Want to explain to me how that’s fair?” He leaned forward, pressing the gun against Mack’s forehead. “You can’t, because it ain’t.”
Mack snatched the barrel, twisted the gun out of Spitz’s hand, and punched him in the stomach. The sheriff doubled over, gasping.
“You’re under … arrest.”
“Maybe later,” Mack said. He checked the revolver’s chambers. Fully loaded. Mack gritted his teeth. Charlie had been here, and Mack wasn’t leaving until he was sure that Charlie wasn’t hunkered down hurt and hiding, or worse.
Mack crossed the sideline and angled toward the locker rooms behind the goalpost.
“Hey!” Spitz shrieked behind him. “Monsters! Here’s one! Get him!”
Charlie opened his eyes. Above him were the branches of scruffy trees. Fire glowed nearby. Mountains of smoke were crawling into the night sky, but the wind was bending it away, carrying it toward the sea. Charlie could see the moon. And stars.
He sat up slowly. He was very wet, and his head hurt. His leg was heavy and throbbing, especially his ankle. He was lying on the mound that bridged the canal and ran into the swamp. The red truck was upside down in the canal in front of him. Across the smoldering fields, he could see the church burning.
Charlie glanced down. He was sitting on the chalk stone.
He jerked away, scrambling off it like a crab. The stone had changed. It was all splinters. They were soft, breaking down to powder between his fingertips.
Under the trees, a small flame flicked to life. The man from the truck was trying to light a cigarette. His face was wet. Long hair clung to his cheeks. The trucker cap was missing.
“Nice trick with the water.” He exhaled. “Enough bullets stop ’em, too. For a while.” He held up the lighter. “Hope you don’t mind. It was in your bag. You shouldn’t be smoking anyway.”
“It wasn’t for smoking,” Charlie said. “Who are you and what do you want?”
The man laughed. “Right to the point, even when the world’s trying to end. I like that.” He held up Charlie’s bag and dropped the lighter inside, then tossed it to him. Charlie caught it in his lap.
“I’m the man who just saved your life, Charlie.” He gave up on his cigarette and flicked it away. He smiled. “I’m your father, and don’t you forget it.”
Charlie stood with his back to a tree and his pack hanging in front of his chest. His eyes were sweeping the shadows under the trees for any sign of the panther. She kept disappearing and then reappearing to tug on Charlie’s shirt once she was certain of the trail. But this last time, she hadn’t returned.
There had been no sign or smell of any Gren.
Charlie’s mind was more crowded than it had ever been, more overloaded with worries and wonders and confusions than he had energy to think about. Cotton was dying. He had just met his father for the first time since his father had earned a trip to prison. But more importantly, Charlie wasn’t feeling well at all. His leg was throbbing up to the knee. He’d dry-heaved into the bushes. His eyes weren’t focusing.
Charlie didn’t have much time, and he knew it.
Bobby Reynolds, an older, thicker, lumpier-faced version of the man Charlie had once loved and feared, crashed through the brush, up to his knees in watery mud.
Animals were shrieking at Charlie from the leafy darkness above. Whatever they were, Charlie didn’t like them.
“Mound curls north,” Bobby
said. “Joins one that shoots southwest. Hand me that map.”
Charlie passed over Cotton’s paper. Bobby used the lighter to look at it.
His father had only been interested in two things. First, helping his son and keeping him safe—especially if that meant putting down swamp monsters. And second, completely ignoring the past and acting like nothing had happened that he might need to address.
Charlie was glad. The last thing he wanted was a talk. A talk would tear things loose inside him he couldn’t deal with right now. On any other night, the idea of being alone with his father would have terrified him. Not tonight. Tonight, Bobby Reynolds was way down the list of scary things. For that, Charlie was grateful.
Charlie leaned his head against a tree trunk. He was feeling ill again.
“North,” his father grunted. He tucked the map into the pocket of his denim jacket. “At least if you want to follow these mounds to the middle.”
Charlie didn’t leave the support of his tree. He just held out his hand for the map.
“You don’t trust me,” his father said.
Charlie didn’t answer. He didn’t lower his hand.
“Right,” said Bobby Reynolds. “Old memories of good old dad, huh? Well, I spent the last couple days looking for you. I just killed—or rekilled—four of those things, and then I pulled you out from under my truck and saved your pasty hide. Now I’m taking you on your crazy swamp quest, and the last time I checked, Prester Mack isn’t here. So start trusting.”
He slapped the map into Charlie’s hand. Charlie followed him through the swamp slop, pushed through brush, and then once again found solid mound ground beneath his feet.
Something moved in the darkness ahead. Charlie’s father clamped his big hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
“Panther,” Bobby whispered. He raised his rifle.
“Really?” Charlie shrugged out of his father’s grip and staggered forward. The panther was pacing—climbing a fallen tree, descending, dropping onto the narrow mound and sliding through brush, circling a small pool of black mud, hopping back onto the mound, climbing the tree, and back down again.