TWENTY-SIX

TO THE LANDFILL

Wearing dark clothes and the thick-soled combat boots he'd found in a dust-covered trunk in the basement, Evan quietly climbed the stairs. He eased Laurie's door open; a shaft of light fell across the child in her bed. Evan stepped in and stood looking at her. She was sleeping peacefully, her face untroubled; beside her lay the rag doll, grinning up at him as if they shared a secret.

Evan reached out and gently touched her cheek. She stirred very slightly, and he drew his hand back. My princess, he thought.

My beautiful princess. I pray to God you always sleep the sleep of the innocent. He leaned over, kissed her forehead softly, then backed away from her and closed the door to her bedroom.

It was time to go.

Through the den windows he could see the moon, not completely oval yet, but as white as ice and casting a clear light. A sluggish night wind was blowing large, silver-edged clouds across the sky, and when they crossed the moon's cunning face, the light became murky, twisted with shadows that looked like figures on horses of gargantuan scale. And now Evan felt as he had so often during the war: leaving the safety of camp for a recon mission under cover of night, trusting his instincts to keep him alive, knowing that all eyes were enemy eyes and morning was ages away. Perhaps it was best, he thought now, that he'd been captured those many years ago, and forced to lie on a cot beneath the contemptuous gaze of that female officer; now he knew that he couldn't underestimate these women of Bethany's Sin because if he did he could expect no mercy.

With them it was either kill or be killed. He took his keys, left and locked the house. McClain Terrace lay cloaked in darkness. He slid into the station wagon and started the engine, switching on the parking lights instead of the full headlights. As he backed out of the driveway, slowly, slowly, the new shovel and pickax clinked together behind him.

As Evan drove away from the house on McClain Terrace he never saw curtains move from a window at the front of the Demargeon house. Never saw the flaming eyes that peered through.

On the drive to the boardinghouse, following the yellow glow of the parking lights, Evan wondered what he would do if he found the bones, of Paul Keating. Go to Sheriff Wysinger? To the state police? He realized there was danger in going to Wysinger; he didn't know on which side the man stood. Was it possible these terrible events were swirling around Wysinger without his even knowing it?

Perhaps, but Evan had decided he couldn't take that chance. There was too much to lose. But how in God's name could he ever explain to anyone what he thought to be true of Bethany's Sin, that it was as haunted as ancient Themiscrya had been, that the deathless essence of the Amazon nation had taken root here, in this village, and one by one the women had been taken over by a fierce, nameless evil that reveled and rejoiced in the slaughter and mutilation of men? The secrets of Bethany's Sin were layered, and dripping with black filth; a beautiful village on the outside, all-perfect, designed to lure its victims closer, and closer, and closer, until they were inescapably entangled. Those things-beyond-death, those bloodthirsty warrior-shadows had clutched leechlike to the soul of Kathryn Drago, and she had brought them out of that ancient cavern and now released them like sparks from a huge blaze to burn within other souls. The queen, Laurie had said. The real queen. Dr. Drago. Was it possible that the bones of an Amazon queen had lain in that cavern and been burned to ashes with the rest? And now that fierce lioness of a woman had claimed Kathryn Drago's body for her own, as a fitting receptacle for a hate and power that had spanned the ages?

Silent streets unwound before him. Mrs. Bartlett's boardinghouse ahead. He slowed, pulled to the curb, and stopped. A figure coming across the lawn.

Neely, beads of sweat already shining on his face, slid in and quietly closed the door. Evan accelerated, turned in a circle, and drove away from the village.

"It's west - " Neely began.

"I can find it," Evan said. At the limits of the village he reached over and switched on the headlights. The road leaped up at him.

Neely could almost grasp the tension radiating from the other man. His own heart was thundering dully within his rib cage. He fumbled at his shirt pocket. "Mind if I smoke?"

Evan shook his head.

Neely took a cigarette out, stared for a few seconds at the climbing match flame, then blew it out. The green lights on the dashboard dials glowed in the ovals of his glasses. "One cigarette is all it would take," he said, mostly to himself.

But Evan had heard. "What?

"One cigarette. Toss it out the window, and poof! Sun's burned and dried out everything around here for miles. The woods are so dry they're crackling. No rain for weeks. Yes sir. Just one cigarette."

He regarded the red-glowing tip.

There was a fork in the road ahead.

"Take the right one," Neely said, and put the cigarette back in his mouth. In another moment he shifted on the seat and said, "What makes you so sure you're going to find anything out here? And why all this damned secrecy?"

"You didn't say anything about this to Mrs. Bartlett, did you?"

Evan twisted his head to the side to look at him.

"No. Nothing."

"Good." Evan was silent, watching the road. A deer burst out of the brush ahead, leaped into thicket, and was gone. "I'm not certain I'll find what I'm looking for in the landfill. As a matter of fact, I'm hoping I don't. I'm hoping I'm stark raving mad; I'm hoping that I'm so crazy I'm not seeing or thinking straight." He paused. "But that's not how it is."

"You're not making any sense."

"This has to do with those women you saw on the King's Bridge Road," Evan told him. "I believe they broke into Paul Keating's house and killed him. And I believe they brought his body to the landfill. As for the secrecy" - his eyes flickered over toward Neely - "we don't want to end up like Keating, now, do we?"

"Turn to the left here," Neely said quietly. He had begun to smell the sweet-and-sour-and-a-thousand-vile-odors smell of the landfill, and he dreaded what was to come. Digging through that mess? Actually lifting out layer after layer? Jesus Christ what have I gotten myself into!

Tendrils of smoke lay across the road, shifting like gray-scaled serpents. "Slow down," Neely said, his nostrils full of the putrid stench of baking garbage. "We're here."

Evan put his foot to the brake and pulled the station wagon off onto the side of the road. He cut the engine, switched off the lights.

To the right he could see a flat, unbroken blackness and, in the distance, the red gleamings of minute fires. They got out of the car, went around to the back; Evan hefted the shovel, handed Neely the pickax and a bull's-eye lantern he'd bought at Western Auto. "Now show me," he said.

"Okay. Watch your step." Neely clicked on the lantern, shouldered the moon-gleaming pickax, and made his way carefully across the black plain. Evan followed in his footprints, his boots cracking earth and awakening thick swirls of dust. Acrid smoke wafted around them, clutching at their hair and clothes like something alive; garbage mounds took vague shapes; rats squealed on all sides. The stench assailed Evan; he ground his teeth and forced back a wave of nausea, thinking only of what he had to do.

Great cracks had split the earth, and by the moon's light Evan could see in those cracks a steaming morass of garbage, layer after layer of it, shifting by degrees as the sun had mercilessly burned, burned, burned. Now it seemed to him that even the moon was brutal, searing his face with a cold fire that made his nerves shriek. Ahead, Neely moved the lantern's beam back and forth across the ground, his shoes crunching dead earth in a no-man's-land; the heat had fallen upon them, cloaking them, and sweat beaded their flesh.

And like whirling, buzzing clouds of darker dust, the flies came. A dozen of them struck Neely in the face, tangled in his hair, spun around his head. "Christ!" he said in disgust, and waved at the things with his lantern. They parted, buzzed, came at him again.

Flies attached themselves to the drops of sweat on Evan's face and arms, drinking greedily of human fluids.

"Wait a minute," Neely said; he stopped, waved at flies, waved again. His eyes followed the track of the lantern on the ground. A huge mound of decaying garbage stood just to the left, topped with bald tires and automobile fenders. A battered, rusted refrigerator lay on its side like an open coffin. Neely moved forward a few yards, looking around to get his bearings; he shone the beam from side to side, searching for that wide crack in which he'd found the teeth. But Christ in heaven the earth was jigsawed with cracks out here, but there was no way to be sure where it had been. I should be packing my suitcase right now, he told himself, not out here in this miserable place. God, the stench of it! And these fucking flies!

"What's wrong?" Evan said behind him.

Neely walked a few steps to where the dry ground had split; glass gleamed in the crack: beer bottles. Why not let this guy do his digging right here, he thought. Get this over with so I can get my ass out of this place? "This is it," he said without looking at the other man.

"You're certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain!" he said, placing the lantern on the upturned side of the refrigerator so the beam would shine down into the split.

Might as well get this over with! He waved flies away that had been dancing before his eyes. "Stand back," he told Evan, and, bracing himself, he lifted the pickax, brought it down into the earth with a smooth, strong swing. Glass cracked; Evan heard the noise of metal scraping metal. Neely pulled the pickax out and struck again, and again, and again. Then he wiped a drop of sweat from the point of his chin and stepped away. "It's all yours."

Evan dug in with the shovel, uncovering bits of glass, empty tin cans, flattened milk cartons, fragments of magazines and newspapers. He dug deeper, putting his shoulders against the shovel; uncovered more glass, cans, Bethany's Sin trash.

"What's that?" Neely said suddenly.

Evan thought the man was talking about a clump of rusted steel wool. He turned and said, "Nothing. Just junk."

But Neely wasn't staring into the deepening hole; instead he was staring off to the right, into the darkness. "No," Neely said quietly. "I heard something." The moon glistened across his glasses.

"A long way off."

"What did it sound like?" Evan rested on his shovel.

"I don't know. Like a whine or something."

A train whistle? Evan thought. He glanced off in the direction the other man was looking, then turned back to the hole. Thrust in with the shovel again. Met harder earth. "Need the pickax again."

Neely swung into the hole, broke earth; a boil of dust engulfed them, then the flies. Death's here, Evan thought, his blood chilling.

Death's here somewhere. He stepped forward after Neely was through and began to dig again. In a few minutes more, he uncovered what at first appeared to be a whole shirt, but holding it up he realized it had been tom into rags for some household chore; he threw it aside, shoveled dirt.

The moon's light lay heavily on Neely's face; he stared into the distance, listening. What had that noise reminded him of? he wondered. Yes. Something he'd heard before.

"Pickax," Evan said. When he'd finished, Neely said, "This is pretty pointless, don't you think? I mean, if you're looking for bones, there's a hell of a lot of territory to cover."

Evan said nothing; he thrust downward, lifted dirt and held it up to the light, cast it aside. Thrust, lifted. Thrust, lifted. Flies gathered around his sweating face, and he shook his head to get rid of them.

Death. Death. Death somewhere. And then, abruptly, he froze. He'd heard a high, screeching noise in the distance; he looked up, scanned the dark, forest-studded horizon.

"You heard that, didn't you?" Neely said. "What the hell was it?" His eyes were wide and shining behind his glasses.

"Some kind of animal off in the woods," Evan replied evenly.

His gaze shifted, searched, saw nothing but moonlight and garbage mounds and shadow. "Pickax."

"Animal, my ass!" Neely said sharply. "That didn't sound like any damned animal I've ever heard before!"

"I need some more earth broken," Evan told him, stepping up out of the deepening trench.

Neely, muttering, stepped down. The pickax rose, fell, rose, fell, rose, fell. In the distance something screeched. Pickax flashed with moonlight. "Theres nothing here, by God!" Neely said. "Christ, I don't know if this is the right place or not! How can I tell?" He pulled himself out from a morass of dirt and trash.

Evan, his shirt soaked, sifted dirt. Coke bottles, crushed beer cans, Tide detergent boxes, clumps of tissue paper, Lysol cans. A strengthening, sickening stench. The flies swarmed, waiting.

Screeeeeech. Nearer. Off from the left now. An eerie whine that made Neely's stomach tighten.

Evan dug in, lifted. A dark, solid object came free from the dirt.

He bent and picked it up, held it to the light. A dirt-and-filth-clumped loafer, creased from wear. While he held it, flies dropped down to examine it, then whirled away. He tossed it out of the trench, now hip-deep, and continued digging.

"You're not going to find anything," Neely said, his voice tense.

"Let's get out of here!"

"In a minute," Evan said. Digging. Digging. Digging. The sides of the trench were beginning to crumble. Dirt rolled around his boots. The flies hovered above him, all of them heralds of Death and scavengers of flesh. His shoulders were aching fiercely, and he hardly heard the next half-human shriek when it came from the right, closer than any of the others had been.

Neely whirled toward the sound, his heart pounding. He'd heard that noise before, on the King's Bridge Road, when a woman with scorching blue eyes had peered at him through the window of his truck an instant before an ax had flashed. The heat had surrounded him, and now he found it difficult to breathe.

"Pickax," Evan said. Neely didn't move. "Pickax, damn it!" He reached up, took the pickax from the fear-frozen man, and began to strike at the earth in a sweat-flinging frenzy.

"They're coming," Neely whispered, staring into blackness, afraid of what he might see. "Dear God, they're coming .... "

The trench had deepened to Evan's waist; he closed his ears to the approaching war cries, closed his mind to the horror that was now racing on horseback toward them, axes glittering blue with moonlight. "Goddamn it I know they're here!" Evan shrieked, his voice shredding, and struck with all-his strength into one of the walls of the trench. The wall cracked, crumbled, split, and began to fall to pieces around him.

And the bones began to spill out like an obscene flood breaking the walls of an earthen dam.

Full skeletons in rotted clothes, broken skulls, pelvises, arms and legs with remnants of gray flesh still clinging, spines that looked like hideous staircases, tumbled out around Evan's legs; he spun, a scream gagging his throat, and struck deeper into the trench with every ounce of strength he could summon. More household trash: boxes, cans, bottles. Struck again. Bones. Grinning, toothless skulls.

Again. Dirt cascaded. Shattered femurs, broken fingers, jawbones, here a skull with a scalp of black hair still clinging, here a rib cage, clotted with dirt, wearing a blue-checked shirt. Struck again, the scream ripping him. The tiny bones of skulls and spines of infants poured out of the dirt. Yes. Yes. Terror gripped his heart and tore at it. The little boys. This is where the little boys come to rest and sleep forever. His mind, reeling with pure shock, groped: a line from a Beatles' song came insanely to him. All good children go to Heaven.

All good children go to Heaven. He swallowed dust; the flies encircled him, feasting on the Death smells, feasting on dried flesh still dangling from human bones. This was the unholy place of Death in Bethany's Sin; not the cemetery, no, because that was a holy place and probably only women lay there. No, this was where the murdered men and the male infants were brought, thrown in with the rest of the garbage, covered over with filth, forgotten. This was the slaughter ground of the Amazons, the corpses heaped here like bodies on blood drenched, smoke-drifting ancient battlefields.

"...they're coming!" Neely screamed at him, had been screaming because he'd seen the first of the rapidly moving shadows approaching, but Evan hadn't heard.

Evan felt his mind slip. He couldn't find the strength to climb out of this godforsaken slaughter pit. My wife and child; got to get my wife and child...

"Come on, damn it!' Neely shouted, and held out his hand for Evan to grasp. "Come on! Hurry!" He glanced back over his shoulder. Shadows taking shape. The rumbling of horse's hooves, a trembling of the earth; burning blue orbs hunting him down. He looked back to Evan, saw that the man had been overcome by shock.

Neely reached down, his nerves screaming, and grasped Evan's wrist, pulled at him.

And in the next instant there came an earsplitting screeeeeeech just behind Neely Ames; he twisted around, his mouth coming open to scream. The night black horse loomed over him like a storm cloud, and an ax blade that glittered with a power like live electric cables whistled down for him. He heard the shriek of air as the metal parted it.

Neely's head, throwing spirals of blood, was flung over Evan's shoulder by the blow; blood spattered his face. The decapitated body, still gripping Evan's wrist, crumpled to its knees and slid down into the trench. The hot droplets of blood brought Evan back to where he was, and to the reality of the nightmare things that were closing in.

Evan jerked his hand free of the death grip and reached for the pickax. The Amazon on the black horse was rearing back for a blow that would split his skull; Evan, his shoulders hunched, swung the pickax into the horse's front legs. The horse shrilled, staggered, lost its balance, and fell heavily, crushing the woman-thing underneath it; there was the sharp, brittle sound of bone breaking and an inhuman, guttural cry of pain.

And then Evan had heaved himself out of the trench and was running across the landfill for his station wagon. The others wheeled their horses toward him, eyes flaming with hatred, axes swinging high; they dug in their heels, and dirt spun from the hooves of their mounts. He glanced over his shoulder as he ran. The one in the lead, on a dappled horse, would catch him before he made the car. He ran on, his legs pumping against the earth; he could feel the ground trembling as the horse gained. He spun around as the ax blade shrieked for him. It whistled past his cheek, and he fell on his stomach to the ground, dug his fist into the earth, ran again; the horse wheeled alongside him, and the Amazon's arm came up for a second blow. Evan stood his ground and flung the handful of dirt into her face; when the ax fell it shaved past his left arm, peeling back the cloth of his shirt . The horse spun in a wild circle as its rider tried to clear her eyes, and the others were fast approaching.

But Evan had reached the station wagon. He flung himself behind the wheel, locked all the doors, rammed the keys into the ignition. His tires threw chunks of earth as he slammed down on the accelerator. Behind him he heard the shrill, bloodcurdling war cry, and he knew they were after him. Bethany's Sin, he thought, his brain throbbing with his heartbeat. Got to get back there. Got to get Laurie and get away. And Kay? What about Kay? No, I'll come back.

Get the state police first. Then bring them back. First get Laurie.

Laurie.

He wrenched the wheel to the left, and the station wagon spun, tires shredding, in a circle that almost threw the car into a ditch on the far side of the road. Then he was accelerating again, his teeth gritted, the headlights showing deserted highway ahead. He heard the next Amazon shriek almost directly in his ear, and then there was a figure on the road before him: a large-flanked chestnut horse bearing a rider whose burning gaze pierced him to the bone. The Amazon's teeth were bared and he had an instant to realize that this woman was the librarian who'd inquired if he wanted to see any art books. But now she wore a different, mask-like face, and hatred screamed from her open mouth. Evan slammed on the brakes, but the horse was too close; the station wagon smashed hard into the animal, staggering it backward and to the side. He heard the grille shatter, and one of the headlights flickered out; but then the Amazon's body, thrown from the horse by the impact, came flying across the car's hood, struck the windshield, and sprayed jagged glass that whined around Evan's face, nicking his cheeks and forehead and neck. The body, face slashed, throat pumping thick blood from a sliced jugular vein, dangled down over the dashboard; the sightless eyes mirrored for another moment the tremendous power of the entity within that form of flesh, and then the blue darkened. The eyes looked like black, empty holes, and the flesh seemed to have withered around the face, giving it the look of a long-dead skull.

Evan pressed his foot to the floor, wound his way back toward Bethany's Sin, back into the vile, evil nest of... them. This time he made no attempt at silence; his tires squealed as he took corners, and the station wagon's engine screamed at the limits of its power.

Dark streets. Dark houses. A terrible, gathering darkness. The moon, grinning in window and window and window.

McClain Terrace. His own house, pitch-black and silent. He drove the car up onto the lawn, leaving treadmarks on the grass, and leaped out, running for the front door. They would be after him, of course, and in minutes they'd find him. He fumbled with his keys in the lock. Hurry. Have to hurry. Have to. They're coming. They're coming. His key slid home. A dog barked, barked, barked.

And in the next instant the door was ripped from his grasp. A hand with manicured nails grasped his wrist, wrenched him into the darkened entrance foyer with a strength that threw him to the floor.

From the darkness a figure reaching, reaching, eyes aflame and terrible, and he heard himself whine like a trapped animal. He was hauled up, pushed through parting darkness, and thrown onto the floor in the moon-dappled den.

Evan, crouched on the floor awaiting the fiery blow of an ax, looked wildly around.

Four figures touched by moon-shadows. Four women. Four sets of merciless, murder-hungry eyes.

One of them sat in a chair on the other side of the coffee table, watching him without speaking.

Dear God, he thought, his mouth as dry as landfill dirt and the image of a crumpling headless body flashing through his head. They were waiting for me all the time. They were waiting.

From the chair the Drago-thing spoke, with two voices: one her own, in her Greek-accented English, the other a guttural harsh language that was the strange tongue of the Amazon, both voices meshing perfectly from the same throat. "Now," she said softly, the Amazon tongue sounding hollow and eerie within the confines of the den. "We shall talk."

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