The Seventh Day

by Scott Shepherd

  Trey sighed, turned back around, and followed his brothers.

  They didn’t see one for quite a while. Long enough that Joad began to think the shroud at the lake might have been a strange one-of-a-kind creature. Then he saw something flicker by the corner of his eye, and reconsidered.

  The forest got darker the deeper they traveled. The mist had dissipated, but the trees’ hunter-green leaves were so lush that only an occasional beam of sunlight poked through to illuminate the way. It was as if their upper limbs had conspired to reach up and entangle with one another, imprisoning anyone below in total darkness.

  Joad realized if the forest didn’t thin out, they’d be in serious trouble. There was a good possibility that when the sun went down they could be trapped in The Fields forever. They certainly wouldn’t be the first.

  Plus, it was getting unnaturally cold. But there wasn’t a breeze. Not even a puff of wind. It felt as if they had descended into a world where warmth wasn’t welcome, along with anything living or breathing.

  It wasn’t lost on Laura.

  “This place feels wrong.”

  Joad nodded. “It definitely does.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Joad hesitated, not wanting to frighten the girl more than necessary. “A place Remaining have been smart to avoid.”

  “It’s where the dead go, isn’t it?”

  So much for trying to pull the wool over Laura’s eyes; Joad had been thinking the same thing. “I think it must be.”

  He felt Laura shudder behind him. Joad wished he could tell her more, but The Fields were as much a mystery to him as anyone else.

  Further complicating matters was Macy. She wasn’t used to toting two riders. For years she had served only under Laura; Sayers on the rare occasion. But carrying both Fixer and the doctor over a distance of ground at such a rapid pace was causing the gray mare to labor. Joad found himself slowing down, waiting for Macy to catch up. It didn’t help hearing the brothers’ yells echoing the blackness—it made their approach seem imminent, but it was impossible to gauge how close they were.

  Laura tossed a concerned look at her longtime companion. “Macy’s having trouble keeping up,” she whispered.

  “I noticed.”

  Joad brought his horse to a stop. Macy looked grateful for the brief respite, as Sayers rode up beside him. “Why are we stopping?”

  Joad was already dismounting. “Macy’s not going to make it at this rate. You need to ride with Laura.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Fixer.

  “Give us some breathing room.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Joad indicated the trees ahead. “Lead the two of them out of these woods before dark. I’ll be along.”

  Fixer looked him in the eye. “And if you’re not?”

  “You stay with them until they’re safe.”

  Joad gave him the look of a man calling in his marker. After all, Fixer would have been a permanent fixture on a pirate ship if it hadn’t been for Joad.

  Fixer nodded, but Laura wasn’t totally on board.

  “You can’t leave.”

  Joad moved back over to Laura and her stepfather, who were now both atop his horse.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Promise me you’ll come back.”

  “Laura. . . .”

  “Promise me on Becky’s life you’ll come back. Otherwise, I’m not moving.”

  Joad saw the pain on Laura’s face the moment she closed her mouth. She immediately tried to take back her words.

  “Joad . . . I didn’t mean. . . .”

  Joad took her hand.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  Joad was gratified to see the girl calm down enough to bring the reins up and urge the horse forward. But Joad didn’t leave yet. He turned to Sayers.

  “If you run into any of those things, Doc—you know what they are now.”

  “Not really. But I now know they’re not my wife.”

  “Or my mother,” Laura said.

  “Just keep telling yourselves that.”

  They shook their heads, willing themselves to believe it. Seconds later, they took off, leaving Joad alone on the forest floor.

  He had wrestled with telling them about seeing one of the wraiths duck through the woods a little earlier. And compromised by giving them fair warning, while hoping the creatures would stay clear of them unless provoked. He didn’t dare share his concern about the approaching darkness and his worry they might get swallowed up by the forest for eternity. Such an admission would only spread panic, and right now he needed the trio filled with hope, if only a glimmer.

  Once they were gone, Joad retraced his steps and went searching for the wraiths, an idea still forming in his head.

  14

  Joad stood in a tight copse of trees, narrowly avoiding the few rays of descending sunlight, and waited.

  For a while it was dead quiet. The dank cold settled around him, causing Joad to wonder if he had made a big mistake. If this didn’t work, he realized, he might never regroup with Laura, Sayers, and Fixer. The paths in The Fields were indistinguishable from one another; left on his feet, he was more likely to disappear forever in the dark green maze of trees before finding his way out.

  The thought was interrupted by a shuffling sound.

  And followed by a quartet of the hooded specters appearing amongst the trees, darting in and out of the sunlight beams.

  Joad hung back and watched. When he was satisfied the wraiths were not moving on, he retreated back into the darkness once again.

  Fixer led the way. Not that he had a clue where he was going.

  He figured his best bet was to follow any trace of sun. Whenever he saw a stream of light appear through the trees, he headed for it, hoping it would open to a patch of blue sky, in turn giving hope that an exit from the forest was just around the corner.

  But each time they slipped into sunshine, the trees’ cover of darkness quickly swallowed them back up. Fixer kept trying different paths but when he passed a pine tree with two parallel trunks that reached into the mist like a gigantic U, Laura let out a moan.

  “We were here a half hour ago.”

  “No way,” said Fixer, so unconvincing he couldn’t even fool himself.

  Sayers stopped riding and looked at the U tree. “You were the one who pointed it out when we passed it the first time.”

  “I’m guessing it wouldn’t have a twin?” Fixer lamented.

  “So, you’re lost,” accused Sayers.

  “Hard to be lost when you never knew where the hell you were going to begin with.”

  “So why are we following you?”

  “I presume you can do much better?”

  “Can’t do much worse,” said Sayers.

  “Great. We get killed, it can be on your head.”

  “Stop it! Both of you!”

  Laura’s yelling at them halted the war of words.

  “You sound ridiculous. And it isn’t getting us anywhere,” she said.

  Both men shrunk back, put in their place by a twelve-year-old girl.

  “Sorry,” said Fixer, directing the apology at Sayers.

  “Same here,” said Sayers.

  Fixer turned back to Laura. “Which way do you think we ought to head?” Definitely at a loss, his question was completely genuine.

  Laura was looking past him. Her lip began to quiver.

  “Away from them. . . ?” she whispered.

  Fixer followed her gaze. Standing directly in their path were three shrouded women.

  Each one looked exactly like his dead sister.

  Trey felt he was spending as much time on the ground as on his horse.

  Tracking Fixer and the others had been that difficult. It had been relatively easy until they got to the forest. He was able to follow hoofmarks through The Flats, even up the mountain and around the lake. But once they entered the forest, the brothers lost sight of Fixer and his friends, b
ecause the foliage was that damn dense.

  Trey was on all fours, trying to catch a glimpse of anything that would pick up their trail. Mercifully, as if on request, a strand of light slipped through the pine needles and illuminated a pattern of four hooves on the ground, heading deeper into the forest.

  “Looks like they went east,” Trey told his brothers.

  Primo rode over and hovered above him. “They didn’t split up?”

  Trey shook his head. “Two sets. They’re still together.” He straightened up. “Really fresh. Can’t be far from here.”

  Secundo, the fourth horse still tethered to his waist, joined them.

  “I think Trey’s right. Thought I heard something moving around a few minutes ago.”

  “I don’t think they’re that close,” said Trey. His eyes strayed back to the ground. “Wait a second.”

  He dropped back to his knees for a closer look.

  “What?” asked Primo.

  “More footprints.”

  “They probably got off and wandered around, just like you’re doing,”

  “I don’t think so. The hoofprints are directly on top of these. Something was here first.”

  Primo dismounted to see for himself. “One of those things we saw in the lake?”

  “Maybe,” said Trey. “Foot size could be a match.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Secundo’s voice made both turn around. Trey thought his brother was responding to him, but Secundo was pointing at a hooded figure that had just emerged from the trees.

  A ray of sunlight swiped across its face.

  Quattro.

  Primo and Trey were so stunned they almost crashed into each other.

  “You’re dead. I saw you die,” Trey insisted.

  “It’s this place,” whispered Primo. “Playing mind games. . . .”

  Quattro, or whatever the hell it was, moved closer toward Trey. His face was unblemished, his body whole; there was no trace of the fatal injuries from his fall or that the fire that turned his body to a pile of ash.

  “Stay away from me. . . .”

  Trey shoved the thing-that-couldn’t-be-his-dead-brother to the ground.

  Then sensed movement behind him.

  A second Quattro had come up right beside Primo. This one had blood dripping from every pore. Its face was singed; it was a living, breathing version of their brother who had survived the funeral pyre.

  Primo screamed.

  Secundo remained on his horse, transfixed in horror. Something crunched above him. He looked up in the trees, fully expecting to see another Quattro.

  But it was the gray rider.

  He dropped off a huge branch and on top of Secundo.

  “You’re not my mommy. You’re not my mommy.”

  Laura repeated it like a mantra, her face buried against Doc’s back as he urged Joad’s horse through the forest. It pained her deeply, knowing this to be the truth. She missed her mother so much it was almost impossible to turn her back on the impostors. Fixer tried to ward off the specters in a similar way, which brought her a small share of comfort.

  “You’re not real!” Fixer yelled.

  Laura dared to lift her just as one of her three mothers reached for her. Doc lashed out with his foot, catching it in the side of the head.

  The wraith let out a screech that sounded like a wounded animal, causing Laura to look away again.

  “Keep going! Please keep going,” she begged her stepfather.

  Laura felt Doc spur the horse with a pair of stiff kicks. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, trying to will away the unholy screams coming from creatures masquerading as the person she missed most in the world.

  Joad waited for the brothers to be distracted by the wraiths before leaping from the tree. The blond brother had been the perfect sitting target.

  He knocked the huge man off the horse in mid-descent, and used his body to cushion their fall. Blondie was so stunned, he couldn’t react before Joad grabbed his head and smashed it on the ground, knocking the man senseless.

  “You. . . .”

  Joad whirled to find a seething Primo, but the black-bearded brother was too occupied with wrestling a wraith he must have figured out wasn’t his dead brother. The third brother had his hands full bashing away at the screeching thing beneath him.

  “You’re dead! You’re dead!” Each scream was punctuated by a punch.

  Joad untied the rope around the blond brother’s hip, scrambled to his feet, and raced for the extra horse. He tossed the rope off its neck and climbed on top of the jet-black steed. The horse bucked and snorted flames of fire.

  But Joad had spent years on horseback, and he’d yet to find a mount he couldn’t win over—even if it spit flames from Hell. He expertly spurred on his new charge and disappeared into the misty forest, leaving one brother unconscious and two others grappling with nightmares in his wake.

  Laura didn’t open her eyes until she felt the warmth of sunshine basking her face. She still heard the wraith’s screams, but soon realized they were only horrible echoes in her head.

  Doc’s soothing words finally broke through.

  “It’s all right, Laura.”

  She looked around and squinted. She couldn’t remember being happier to see anything more than the bright sun and open pasture of lavender spread out in front of her.

  Until a few moments later, when Joad emerged from the forest astride the most magnificent horse Laura had ever seen.

  15

  Primo could tell Trey was skittish on his hands and knees in the forest dirt. Couldn’t blame the man. It had only been an hour since they were suddenly ambushed by the hellish one-two punch—the rider (an increasingly large thorn in Primo’s side) and whatever those Things were that masqueraded as their dead brother.

  Primo had known it wasn’t Quattro immediately. Didn’t even need to see a second one attacking Trey to figure that out. He had heard stories about what roamed The Fields, and though no one had specifically said it was a place that harbored the dead, Primo had entered the forest with his eyes and mind wide open to extraordinary possibilities.

  It didn’t make it any easier to strike out at the spitting image of the brother he sorely missed. Primo couldn’t remember raising a hand against Quattro, or even considering it.

  Before the world went to shit (back when Quattro had just been a Donut World employee called Norman), Primo’s youngest sibling looked up to him with the adoration of a pup and the inquisitiveness of an eager student begging to be shown the way. After The Seventh Day, it had been Quattro who’d patiently escorted him through a strange new land looking for material necessary to replace his lost eye and repair his mangled face.

  So, when the Quattro-Thing grabbed his shoulder and squeezed with extraordinary strength, it had taken Primo just a touch longer to strike back. For a split second he wished they could be together again, exploring what was left of the world. But then the thing screeched like a wounded banshee and Primo’s animal instincts took over.

  His fury unleashed, he wrestled it to the ground. Primo wrapped his hands around the neck of the thing that dared to be his brother, and proceeded to choke the life out of it. It was as much a release of frustration for everything taken from him and the world by The Strangers as self-preservation kicking in once he had been threatened.

  Trey had been so freaked by the specter’s appearance that by the time he realized it wasn’t real, his attacker had gotten the upper hand. Primo, having vanquished his Quattro-pretender, had crawled on hands and knees to come to Trey’s aid. Together they overcame the wraith and eventually, like its dead mate, it revealed its true shape: a bloody, faceless figure, identical to the body they had come across in the lake.

  Getting Trey to breathe normally and calm down proved an equal challenge. The youngest surviving brother had a difficult time coping with what had just occurred.

  “How is that even possible? Quattro died. We burnt him with the ship.”

  “Of cours
e we did.” Primo took in the dark pined forest. “It’s this place. Something about it just made us think we saw him. For years I’ve heard tales that the dead occupy The Fields. I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Trey, desperate for any logical explanation.

  “Maybe we bring the dead along with us and this place knows it.” Primo’s eyes drifted to Secundo lying motionless on the ground. “Let’s check on your brother.”

  Primo saw this sat just fine with Trey, who was clearly having trouble grasping any of it and welcomed an assigned task. Tending to Secundo had taken a while and it frustrated Primo. He knew that with every passing moment, the Rider, Fixer, doctor, and girl were slipping further from their grasp.

  By the time Secundo regained consciousness, an hour had passed and Primo figured the quartet was long gone, especially now that they had increased their number of horses by stealing Quattro’s. But rather than give up the hunt as any sane man would, Primo was more determined than ever to catch up with Fixer, to make him and his cohorts pay for the damage they had wrought.

  Secundo’s head wound had streaked his blond locks with blood, but he refused to find water to wash it away. The gargantuan brother decided to wear it as a badge of dishonor until they caught and destroyed their foes. This heartened Primo and re-invigorated Trey as they took up the chase and headed deeper into the forest.

  But the going had been rough, and Trey found himself backtracking more often than not. Primo wondered if the Rider had purposely zigged and zagged, crossing his own path, hoping to throw them off the trail. He didn’t put it past the man, considering the Rider had practically collaborated with the wraiths to pull off the sneak attack.

  Secundo spent a good part of the time apologizing. He told Primo he’d heard something up in the trees but ignored it; consequently, being caught unaware had lost them one of their horses. Primo kept telling him to forget it.

  “It was slowing us down,” he said. “We should travel much faster now.”

  “If we can ever find our way out of here,” responded Secundo.