ISSUE 008

Criminal captors and their hippie hostages at Black Hide think they're seeing an elaborate fantasy costume moving toward them through the grass. The smoke over Black Hide parts and clears, revealing a surreal canopy of clockwork layers of stars in the night sky and the glowing full moon.

As a 60-foot shadow falls over them, everyone's skin is inexplicably stained red like blood. The earth shifts and old bones sprout from the grass as the spirit with no name collects his tribute. Spider-like Maidens of Death rappel from his long hair to gather the stained skins of the slaughtered, stitching new red flesh into the growing tortured patchwork of the spirit's own skin as he feeds.

The mass cry of terror and pain is sweet music to the vampires at the Moonbeam, who take pause from their ceremony and stand erect, cocking their heads like wolves, savoring the chilling tones. These thousands of screams can also be heard by Ray in the moment before he touches off the loaded cannon outside the tavern.

A hot spray of shrapnel and splintered wood punches through the walls of the Moonbeam, tire chains whipping mere inches over Linda and the billiard table, cutting the vampires down like tall corn.

Ray frees Linda just as she gives birth, but he is killed by a crablike amputee remnant of Marcel. Adam arrives a moment too late to save Ray, but just in time to battle Marcel and save Linda's newborn. Marcel is now a misshapen and horrible half-a-Heisman, oozing like raw hamburger as he gnaws through the umbilical cord, hissing as he desperately attempts to scuttle under the broken floorboards with the screaming newborn tucked under one stumpy arm. He loses his grip on the baby and disappears empty-handed.

Candy's estate is struck with enough napalm to make "Apocalypse Now" look like a grease fire at Denny's. The leadership and legions of three feared gangs are reduced to a snowy layer of black ash and brittle bone.

At Black Hide, the fast-moving flames immolate any criminals, hostages or National Guard troops not driven into the spirit's hallowed kill zone. When the flames reach the beginning of the Modoc Reservation, however, the furious red wall grows suddenly still, then seems to lie down like a sleeping beast - and it simply disappears.

After the last skulls are stripped of flesh, cracked open and sucked clean by the spirit with no name, the lush grass of Black Hide returns to its work (as depicted by the poet Carl Sandburg), seamlessly covering over all signs of the destructive harvest as swirling curtains of smoke give way to gray daylight.

The prisons are stormed and retaken in a violent one-sided rout by freelancing Canadian Special Forces. They're amazed to see plucky Dani emerge from the fray in her blood-spattered skirt and khaki jacket, stepping over the bodies of her former captors and urging her dazed crew to find the best light for an exclusive broadcast.

Adam drives through surreal, spectacular scenes of carnage on his way to find help. Linda, weak and fading from shock and blood loss, holds her newborn close with bloody, jail-tattooed hands. Badly wounded, Adam blacks out, drifts off the road and founders into a ditch near the Modoc Reservation.