Page 1 (1/2)

They were all there when Crow and his Tea in for that last job All the policemen and local officials The mayor The school board It was that kind of small Indiana town

It was that kind of hot su dust raised by the se hankies to their faces and coughing Then they stood on the brown grass and watched the procession circle deafeningly around theines on all five vehicles stopped at once Jack Crow stepped from the lead Jeep and stood there, all six-feet-two ofup at the target When he turned back the local officials stood about him in a semicircle, as if for warmth

In fact for warmth

Crow smiled easily at thelanced at his watch It was high noon and 105 degrees

Ti ten e went off on a second-story balcony and drove the entire section flat to the ground like an angry fist There was a lot ain The grapples began snagging at the wreckage and dragging it away

The towns at the first screech of steelinto position They watched the crew of five appear fro pikes and stand ready Mostly, they watched Crow

They probably didn’t jump more than a foot the first ti blond man named Cat from his lawn chair crow’s nest atop one of the seainst the bright sunlight and pointing "Right there on the end"

"Okay," replied Crow calmly "Rock and roll"

The crewthe area as best as the broken shard footing allowed From their back pockets they took what looked like woloves and put thehtly The townsether

Then Crow, dragging cable froht fist, stepped through the circle of his ed heavily over the target area He stepped back and held out his left hand Soset and then everybody just stood there for a nal to the crane pulled the cable taut The masonry had barely tilted to one side when the first fiend caony of the sun’s rays, shrieking like a harpy and stabbing out with black claws and dead gray fangs and then spouting a vile black glob as Crow’s first shot drove a bolt the size of a baseball bat through its chest and spine and eight inches into the cornice behind it

It writhed and howled and burned and cried and dragged with maniacal frenzy at the wooden stake, but the u it, rubbing it away froht summer Indiana afternoons

"Now that," offered Cat after several seconds of heavy silence, "eird"

The mayor turned to the elder town councilman and chuckled The latter responded in kind Soon all the towns with the break of the tension and with the relief that maybe after all the horror of the pastdisgustedly down from his perch above them, none of the other me disdain turned theotten very quiet for a very long five seconds Jack said, "The leader shouldn’t have popped first He usually sends everyone else ahead"

"How" began the mayor before his voice cracked cleared his dry throat and tried again "How do you knoas the leader?"

Jack lit a cigarette and stared at the ground "After a while," he replied softly, "you can tell"

He stood there quietly like that for several seconds Then he looked at them, actually looked at the individual townsmen for the first time

It had wilted them The horror, the losses, the sense of total naked iet worse

So what, he thought next, are you gonna do when it’s over, gents? When your town has seen you as worthless and craven and you feel your onna do what others have tried?

Are you gonna take it out on us?

When it’s over, are you going to cheat us to show you’re still et worse That was just the first one

"All right," he barked abruptly, clapping his hands sharply together

"Let’s get on with it Rock and roll"

And they did And it did get worse The second eruption was a howler and a screecher, again vile and terrifyingly fast, and the black bloody flecks fountained when the bolt struck it and sla seconds after one of the crew had punctured its skull with his pike

It was horribly gruesohtmare

It was a woman each townsman had known for over forty years

After the schoolteacher came the local postmaster, the proirl with the irreversible misfortune to blow a tire on a country lane that actually was dark and long but only appeared e with the proportions

"Nine in all, counting the leader," said Anthony reading from Cat’s clipboard an hour and a half after the last appearance "But only three goons" He looked up froe at his boss "They weren’t very busy, were they?"

Crow took the clipboard frolanced at it "Nope," was his only response