Bad Moon Rising (Pine Deep 3)

“I don’t know. We keep hearing explosions. I lost count of how many. ”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the hospital, in Saul’s room. We’re all here. I—”

“Val, listen to me,” he interrupted. “Listen really carefully. Frank’s dead. ”

“Oh my God! How?”

“Vic Wingate killed him. Vic’s part of this, and—”

“I know about Vic. Mike told me. ”

“Mike?”

“Crow…he’s here with us. He’s changed, Crow, he’s—”

There was another explosion, this time well ahead of them, and the cell signal just died.

“Val! VAL!” He yelled, but he was talking to dead air. He hit RECALL, but nothing. He looked at his phone. No bars. “My phone just died. Try yours,” he said to LaMastra, who already had his out.

“Nothing. I was trying to call my friend Jerry Head to see if he could give us some backup…and then nothing. As soon as that last explosion hit. ”

Crow drove, swerving around a swelling rush of cars racing away from town. “The bridge…and now what? The cell phone tower? Val got cut off, but she said that there were a lot of explosions. ”

“Oh man. ”

“You’d better reload us, Vince. This is going to be bad. ”

“It’s already bad. ”

“Then it’s going to get worse. ”

2

Billy Christmas heard the screams and grinned. “The tourists are really loving this stuff. ” He sipped hot mint tea from his travel mug and parked a haunch on the empty flatbed that had just come back. The returning customers were being herded toward the concession stand, a second tractor was pulling a fresh group of victims out, but the third was deep in the attraction. Weird theremin music filled the air.

“Yeah, they’re eating it up,” agreed BK. “Guess no one needs it to actually be dark to get into the mood. ”

Thunder rumbled in the sky. “Dark enough,” Billy said.

“Not supposed to rain, though. I checked the weather…it’s clear everywhere else. Probably just a passing system. Lucky us. ”

There was more thunder, a shorter burst not preceded by a lightning flash. BK looked east over the miles of waving corn. He saw the glow on the horizon and almost dismissed it as lightning—but the glow was too orange and it didn’t flicker, merely tinted the undersides of the clouds.

“Christ!” BK pointed, but Billy was already climbing up onto the stakebed’s deck.

“Something just blew up real good. Damn! Th

ere’s another!”

They watched a small fireball sear its way upward in the distance.

“That’s near the town,” BK said. He pulled his cell phone out and hit the speed dial, calling Jim Winterbottom, his point man for the parade. The phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail. When he tried again, his own phone went dead. “That’s weird…suddenly I get no bars. ”

There were four more explosions, none of them close to the hayride.

“Yeah, me too. Try the walkie-talkie. ” Sarah Wolfe had arranged for the police department to loan the security force a set of walkie-talkies—older models that had been in storage but which would still work as a backup. The signals were bounced by relay towers and routed through the department’s switchboard.