Hellfire

by Jeff Provine

  “I reckon they don’t like it,” Kemp said.

  Voices called out from the woods behind them. The monsters looked back over their shoulders and snarled. They retreated into the shadows.

  “It’s the others,” the girl said. “They must have gotten through the fence!”

  “And the sound of gunshots’ll make ‘em crazy,” Kemp added.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” Blake told them. “My horse is exhausted, but it’s only a couple of miles back to Oak Grove. We can stay ahead of them.”

  Kemp pointed at his feet. Patches of blood stood in the dirt on his skin. “I’m not staying ahead of anybody like this.”

  “Maybe we could run back to the hospital,” the girl suggested. “We could take one of the buggies from the stable.”

  Kemp shook his head. “They have an airship. They could spot us from anywhere on the roads.”

  Blake drew up his revolver again. “The airship is their advantage. We’ll take it from them.”

  The two looked up at him, then at each other, and then back at him.

  Blake didn’t want to waste time explaining. “Follow me! Yah!”

  He spurred the weary horse. It twitched and then leaped into a run around the two. Blake checked back over their shoulder to make sure they were following. Kemp limped with a blood-splatter down one leg. The girl helped him keep up.

  He glanced at the tree line. Nobody was there yet.

  The horse rounded the edge of the woods and came upon huge decorative gates. “Gloriana State Mental Hospital” was written out in an ornate cast-iron arch over two brick columns. Beyond it, sitting almost as if it were asleep, was the huge airship. Its canvas balloon nodded in the breeze, dangling upward from the top of the wooden passenger boat attached to it. Blake didn’t know how it worked, but it was their best bet of escape.

  He leaned forward, pressing his horse on. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the hospital entry, even though the wide, wooden doors stood open. That was good. There would be fewer witnesses.

  As soon as his horse was near the back door of the balloon, he tugged on the reins. “Whoa, there, girl!” He hopped off, patted her neck and whispered, “You’ve done very well.”

  The horse blew a raspberry with her lips.

  Kemp and the girl were just a few yards behind him. In the distance, Blake saw a mob of people chasing after them. White-coated orderlies were mixed with men in gray overalls waving shovels and wrenches. At the head of them all was Ticks, a hand on his black hat as he ran.

  Blake had to make this quick. He jumped onto the platform at the rear of the airship’s ark and into the open back door. Both hands cradling his revolver tight to his chest, he ran through the long wooden hallway. He kicked open each door, finding a pair of storerooms, a set of bunkrooms, a furnace room, and another set of storerooms with lockers. His boots clomped on the cedar floor as he went. Everything seemed deserted, until he came to the forward cabin.

  It was a half-moon room with plenty of open windows crossed by aluminum bars. Grease-paper shutters were closed over half the windows. A pair of wooden wheels stood at the back of the room alongside speaking tubes, glass gauges, and brass levers. A man in spectacles sat on a leather stool in the middle of the room, reading a newspaper. He looked up when Blake burst in, blinked, and then fell over backward.

  “You!” Blake shouted. “Get out of here!”

  “I—what?” the man stammered.

  Blake had no time. He shot at the floor. The sound reverberated inside the closed room, and the man crumpled his newspaper trying to cover his ears. Blake’s own ears were ringing.

  “Out the back door!” Blake shouted. “Now!”

  The man dropped his paper and scurried. Blake chased after him, encouraging him to move faster. When they came to the back door, Blake kicked him, sending him sprawling over the rails along the edge of the back platform.

  Kemp and the girl were there, gasping for air, their eyes wide.

  “Get in here!” Blake barked.

  The two didn’t argue. He shoved them down the hallway and turned back to the mob. They were less than a minute away. Blake gritted his teeth.

  He turned back inside, grabbing the wooden door as he went and slamming it shut. A thick lock rested on the inside, and he bolted it tight. He hoped that would be enough to hold them until they got this thing off the ground.

  The girl and Kemp were already in the forecab. Kemp looked it over.

  “Can you get it going?” Blake asked. He was surprised at how breathy his voice was.

  “I’ve been working a locomotive for years,” Kemp said. “How different could it be?”

  Blake nodded, but then he stopped and looked back at the fiery-haired boy. “I thought you were the fireman, not the engineer.”

  “Yeah, but I kept an eye on things,” Kemp said simply.

  The girl let out a sharp groan and buried her face in her hands.

  Kemp ignored her and stepped to the controls. His head moved up and down and from side to side as he looked each one of them over. Blake watched. He wondered what the young fireman thought as he pieced them together.

  “Ah, here we go,” Kemp said. He used a muddy hand to grab one of the levers above his head and pulled.

  A moan like a giant’s yawn came from above their heads. Blake looked upward a moment. The girl was standing next to the stack of gauges with a puzzled look on her face.

  “Is this needle supposed to be moving down?” she asked.

  Kemp dashed toward it, stopped, and gasped. “We’re losing pressure!”

  He ran back to the lever and shoved it back into place.

  “Not that one?” Blake asked.

  “No, that apparently opens the flaps to allow air to escape,” Kemp muttered. “I thought it looked right since its line was directed upward, but maybe we need…”

  Blake grimaced.

  “Kemp!” a voice cried from outside.

  Blake’s grimace deepened. Their pursuers had caught up.

  Pounding started at the back door.

  “Kemp! Open the door!” the voice yelled again.

  Blake crept across the forecab and peeked around one of the paper shutters.

  Ticks stood outside, his boots planted firmly. He had his black coat tossed back. Both of his hands rested on revolvers at his hips. “Kemp! I’m going to give you until the count of three to come out of there, and then I’m coming in after you!”

  Blake leaned at the corner for cover and looked at the door. There was rhythmic thudding at the back door now. The wood held against the pounding fists, an ax would break through in two swings.

  “One!” Ticks shouted from outside.

  Blake looked back at Kemp. He and the girl were looking over the controls furiously, trying to decipher them.

  “Two!”

  He turned back to Ticks. Blake knew he had to do something to stall. He brought up his dragoon and took aim.

  “Thr—”

  Just as he started the word, Blake snapped a shot at Ticks’s feet. Something tempted him to aim for the marshal’s heart, but that would not be justice. Maybe the man with the waxed mustache deserved it, especially after what he did to Mrs. Kemp and her daughter, torturing them with cruel words, on the edge of a fit of laughter… but Blake wasn’t a coldblooded murderer.

  The bullet cast up a spray of dirt. Ticks went into a fury of dancing, throwing up his arms and legs and stumbling backward. The pounding at the back door stopped.

  Blake smiled.

  Ticks recovered himself and ducked into the crowd of orderlies who stood watching. He grabbed one around the neck and held him in front of his body with the crook of his arm over the orderly’s throat. The orderly gagged and pulled with both hands.

  “Jack!” the girl whispered in fright.

  Blake’s smile faltered.

  “That is enough!” Ticks screamed. He drew out a gun with his free hand. “Come out now!”

  There was a series of clicks behind Bla
ke. He turned to see Kemp standing with a lever pulled tight in his hand. The sound of rushing wind filled the whole cabin. It came from the furnace behind them, which spilled out a smell of rotting eggs that mixed with the warm cedar.

  “There it is!” Kemp called. He and the girl let out wild laughs. They threw their arms around one another. Then they suddenly parted and looked away, both with red cheeks.

  The floor moved under Blake’s feet. They were actually moving upward.

  “Stop them!” Ticks shouted. He opened fire, shooting one round after the next at the airship.

  “Get down!” Blake bellowed.

  He pushed himself away from the wall and tackled the two, forcing them to the floor. There wasn’t much cover, but there was hardly any chance that Ticks would hit any of them. Blake counted the shots… four, five, six, and they stopped.

  “Okay,” he said. He let the two young people go. “He’s done for now.”

  There were several holes in the paper shutters. Splinters of wood stuck out where the bullets had gone into the ceiling.

  “What if he shot the balloon?” the girl asked.

  Kemp shrugged. “Bullet holes are too small to do any real damage, I think.”

  “Better the balloon than any of—” Blake was cut off by a loud thud from the rear of the airship.

  The back door had burst open.

  Without a word, Blake broke into a run down the long hallway. Several men were already there, pushing their way inside. The one in front had an ax. Another behind him had a shovel, and yet another had a wrench held up over his head.

  Blake brought up his revolver again. His finger twitched on the trigger.

  He wasn’t a murderer. In all his years of service, he’d never shot a man. There had been plenty of times he’d shot at men, keeping them pinned behind cover while someone went down to surround them. Most men were reasonable. When they recognized that facing a judge was better than getting shot in a standoff, they would give up out of self-preservation.

  Men who got spooked were a gamble. Some gave up immediately. Others panicked and went wild, willing to shoot anything.

  Blake didn’t have these men surrounded, and they wouldn’t run out of ammunition. All he could do was spook them… or put them down. He should at least warn them.

  “Get out!” Blake shouted. “I don’t want to shoot you!”

  The men replied with a rallying cry and dashed forward with their makeshift weapons.

  Blake winced, but then he opened his eyes and fired. The gun let out a deafening roar that echoed down the hallway.

  The man in front uttered a dull gasp and dropped his ax. He fell forward onto the wooden deck.

  Blake let out a pained yell of his own. He twisted the fear and guilt into anger and turned the scream into a battle cry. He kept it going, roaring with all his might. Leaping into a run, his pace picked up as he went. His boots pounded against the cedar floor to add to his noise. Blake leaped over the fallen ax-man, who lay still.

  The other men fell back. They ducked out the door and back onto the little platform.

  Blake gave a final shout as he ran and shot his dragoon again. He aimed between them, missing any human flesh. A piece of a wooden post that was part of the rope railing behind them exploded, leaving a black scar amid cedar splinters.

  That was enough to drive them off the airship. The men jumped away from him and disappeared. A moment later, Blake heard a pair of thumps on the ground below.

  He stopped running when he reached the doorway. His old heart was fighting its way out of his chest. He took several breaths to calm down.

  They were about twelve feet up, and the ground receded faster and faster. The top floors and roof of the hospital filled most of Blake’s view. Looking down past his feet, he could see men standing helplessly, looking back up at him. Ticks ran among them, shouting something that nobody seemed to hear.

  Blake had never especially been a friend to high places. He’d dealt with them when he had to, like when he had to patch his roof or the time he climbed Bastrop’s water tower to get Barney Perkins down when the man raved with Stoker’s Madness. Seeing the ground actually falling away made his head spin. His stomach was already unsettled from shooting the man with the ax. He walked backward into the hallway and shut the heavy door again. The lock was broken, but that didn’t matter anymore.

  Blake let his gun fall to the floor. He wanted no part of it for a while.

  When he turned, he found the man he had shot lying in the hallway. Blake thought he had moved a little from where he fell.

  He walked calmly up to him and knelt down. Blood was spattered all across his trousers at the thigh. The man held his leg and whimpered.

  Blake hadn’t killed him, just winged him below the hip. It didn’t even hit an artery. He let out a long sigh of relief.

  They had made their escape, stealing federal property and taking a hostage. At least murder wasn’t added to the list.

  This wasn’t everyday work for a lawman.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tom Husk panted as he swam. Drops of muddy water splashed into his mouth, and he spit them out again. He had long given up retching against the flavor of dirt, fish, and decaying vegetation. All that mattered was survival.

  He didn’t know how long he had been swimming, but it looked like it the sun had begun its slow descent toward the west. That meant he had left the lumberyard hours before and spent nearly all his time hiking or swimming since. If he lived to find a bed, he vowed he would stay there forever.

  His arms ached, but he made them keep dragging his body forward. Husk fought exhaustion by floating and letting the bayou carry him a little at a time. If he tried to float without swimming for too long, he would begin to sink again. His feet felt like lumps inside his socks and boots, which had swelled up with bayou water.

  A shadow crossed his vision. Husk gasped and dove beneath the water. He pushed himself down as far as he could go and swam with his arms and legs like a frog.

  Above him, there was a furious splash. He pushed a few more strokes and then came back up to the surface for a gasp of air. Beside his head, there was a bobbing log, surrounded in popping bubbles it had made.

  Husk looked back at the bank. The monster was there, huffing to itself and looking for another projectile as it followed him. It had grabbed dirt clods, rocks, and even a branch torn off a tree to hurl at Husk while he desperately tried to swim away. Whenever he got too close to the opposite shore, it threatened to jump again. Husk doubted he could outrun it, even if he had the energy to climb through brush a monster could smash out of its way.

  It was funny: the more time he spent with the monster, the less horrifying it seemed. It had surprised him to the point he lost his breakfast, but now it was just ugly. He didn’t fear it anymore. He hated it.

  He wanted to kill it.

  Husk had known from the beginning it was evil, something so wrong it shouldn’t be real. He wondered how the mayor had tolerated it so long. The Rail Agency could be very persuasive since they held the schedules to trains that determined the economic viability of a town, but why would they try to keep locals away from it?

  Circus ape indeed.

  A crunching sound rang. Husk peeked above the water enough to see the monster tossing a cluster of branches up into the air. The twigs were intertwined and snapped as the misshapen brush broke in two.

  Husk dove again. The monster had been throwing anything it could find, but the brush didn’t seem too threatening. It crashed into the water with a fresh set of bubbles.

  He rose back to the surface for a breath. Just as he opened his eyes, he saw a fist-sized rock headed straight for his head.

  He didn’t have time to swear. Husk tried to duck, but the sharp stone caught him along the scalp. He grabbed his wound with one hand and slid back below the water.

  Great, now I’m bleeding, too, he thought. At least having the monster around him kept away the alligators. Animals had enough sense to stay clea
r of it. Only a human would be foolish enough to try to go near the thing.

  When Husk’s lungs burned from stale air, he went back up to the surface. He stayed low in case the monster watched for him, took a drop-flecked breath, and then ducked down again.

  He swam for he didn’t know how long this way. Every few moments, another branch or rock came his way, but he usually had enough warning to duck out of its way.

  The water became more turbulent. Husk panicked and swam away from the liquid rocking him. Maybe it was the monster overcoming its fear and diving in. Maybe it was rolling a huge tree after him.

  Husk’s lungs burned again, but he fought to stay underwater. It was still shaking around him, and then it went still. He hung in the murky depths for a moment, feeling it move around him. It wasn’t faster, but something had changed. Curiosity pestered him more than his aching lungs, and he went back to the surface.

  He rose up slowly, just the top of his head to his eyes. Water poured off his hair and blurred his vision. He risked wiping it away with a hand and spun around slowly to get his bearings.

  There were suddenly three views of water instead of just upstream and down. Husk blinked more water out of his eyes. It was Twelve Mile Bayou. He’d made it to where Middle Bayou joined up. It wasn’t far now to Shreveport and safety.

  The monster stood on the far bank, which was now a corner of land between the two bayous. Its mouth gaped open, showing rows of triangular teeth.

  Husk leaned back in the water and let it slowly draw him away. He grinned. He was all in the clear now.

  He didn’t know how many men the monster had killed, but at last Husk wasn’t one of them. Maybe the wounded ones had a chance to get up while he had unintentionally lured it away. If anything, Husk was a hero.

  His grin grew. “Not bad for a newspaperman.”

  The monster let out a bleak howl from its corner.

  “I beat you!” Husk called back.

  It stopped howling and looked at him with its tiny eyes set between mounds of flesh.

  Husk laughed. “That’s right! I beat you!” He laughed again.

  When he looked again, the monster was gone. Husk blinked and noticed his heart race. It was somehow worse not knowing where the monster was than having it follow him.