Hellfire

by Jeff Provine

  “It probably went back to its burrow,” Husk told himself.

  A tremendous crash rolled like thunder from the nearer bank. Softer thuds followed. Husk couldn’t see what happened, but the trees all shook.

  Husk found water washing up over his mouth. He sputtered and fought back into a swimming position. After a few strokes, he peeked again.

  The monster was there, on the bank, standing in the shadows under the leafy boughs.

  “Oh no,” Husk muttered.

  It must have jumped the bayou again. Now it was stomping after him. Its merciless expression of humored torture was replaced by determined rage.

  “Aw, leave me alone!” Husk called.

  It roared back at him. The sound made Husk’s ears hurt.

  He fell back into a slow crawl. The flow of the water was with him at least, giving him a little extra pace now that they were closer to the river. The monster had to keep up a trot to stay with him.

  He kicked himself for mocking it. This whole day had been a fiasco. If he had just taken his story last night and gone home, he could be taking an afternoon nap now, waiting for out-of-town papers to arrive before setting his news in the printer. No, he had to follow the lead the sheriff had suggested. It was all Blake’s fault.

  Stop thinking that, Husk shouted inside his head as he swam.

  Husk had brought up the other train wrecks in the first place. Blake was a good man, and he had meant well. There was a mystery to be solved to keep his town safe. Husk couldn’t blame him for that without being a miserable waste of a man himself.

  He had to blame someone else.

  It was that gator-hunter Pike’s fault for missing the lasso. In fact, he even put this cursed expedition together. The mayor and the rail agents had told the townsfolk to keep clear of the monster. Why didn’t they listen?

  Why didn’t I listen? Husk asked. Goosebumps broke out across his cold cheeks. Because I had to know the truth.

  The truth was everything. Stories filled with gossip might sell a few papers in the short run, but that was nothing. A real newspaperman built a foundation of truth and trust. This monster destroyed lives, and he had to warn people.

  Besides, it is evil.

  The voice in Husk’s head didn’t seem like his own. He paused a moment and then went back to swimming. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was right. If he had any iota of righteousness in him at all, he had to destroy that monster.

  “Righteousness.” There was a word that Husk hadn’t heard since giving up Sunday morning meetings more than twenty years ago. He wasn’t sure if he even knew what it meant anymore.

  Husk gritted his teeth and blew air through them to keep out the dirty bayou water. “I have to kill it.”

  How, exactly, he didn’t know. His revolver was at the bottom of the bayou, which was just as well since his ammunition was soaked through in his pocket. Every inch of him was drenched. At least the cold water was good for his jammed fingers. They hurt a little, but he was more worried about his aching arms and legs from swimming so far.

  If he were exhausted, he could only imagine how the monster felt moving around its huge mass. Or maybe it didn’t get tired. It’d been shot with more than a hundred bullets during the course of the raid, yet it seemed strong as ever.

  Except for the spear.

  It had been hurt. The boar spear had hurt it, and so had the machete.

  Husk took a long stroke and peeked back at the monster again. It still followed him, lurching through the twisted underbrush at the edge of the bayou. Its left arm, where the boar spear had stuck him, still dangled. Its right arm, where the machete had hit, still oozed gray pus. Perhaps that was why it only threw small things at him in the river.

  What’s different about the spear and the machete? Husk pondered, going back into his swimming. Its size. It has a lot of surface area to make contact.

  It was an idea, at least, which was more than he had a minute ago. If he were going to fight for his life, he needed a weapon with mass, something that could hit the monster very hard and keep the wound open. Husk wondered if he could commandeer a locomotive and run it down.

  He shook his head at himself and spat more water. Trains had gotten this whole mess started. Maybe he could cut a bell loose from the town square or…

  The notion struck him as he heard the distant thrumming of the city sawmill. Husk couldn’t even see Shreveport yet over the muddy water that sloshed into his eyes, but he could hear it. The sawmills were roaring with turbines that spun enormous blades fast enough to slice through whole tree trunks. The trunks were stacked up in the yard awaiting pickup for furniture mills or men needing cabins. Husk had read the stories about what was left of men who had gotten sucked under when one of the piles fell. Not even a monster could survive that.

  Husk paddled toward the sound. The bayou was empty since many of the lumberjacks had taken the afternoon to go monster-hunting, and fishermen would have cleared out by the heat of the day. He was surprised he didn’t run across at least a little boat, but he supposed people weren’t out much with a monster running around.

  His legs were so tired they burned, and Husk’s arms outright hurt. Yet, he didn’t dare stop swimming. He had to stay ahead of the monster enough to make it to shore and get into the lumberyard. The pain grew worse and worse. Husk sucked down as much sultry air as he could and pressed on.

  The distant noise of the sawmill became clear whines of different blades. Each called out with a different tone when they bit into types of wood. The mill itself came into view with the tips of smokestacks and the metal pipes reaching into the bayou, slurping up water to boil into steam to drive the engines.

  “Swim a little farther,” Husk told himself. His voice was ragged. It was hard to get words out between his gulps of breath.

  The smokestacks led to rooftops and then the wooden fence around the lumberyard itself.

  Now, something told him. Husk agreed.

  He changed his course and made broad strokes toward the shore. As he kicked, riverbed came up underneath his feet. It stroked his foot at first, but soon he had to scrunch his shoulders to stay underwater. Husk kept swimming until he practically crawled along the muddy floor. Without changing his rhythm, he broke out of the water into a running gait.

  The monster roared with its voice of mangled screams. It was behind him by only twenty yards. Already it looked huge. Its left arm dangled, and it cradled its right arm as if it was in pain. Its warped ugliness still made Husk cringe.

  He poured himself into running. His clothes weighed him down. Every time he set down a foot, his boot gave a hollow squish. Still, he pressed on. He had no other choice.

  At the wide gate to the lumberyard, a few men stood talking beside an empty wagon. The horse started stamping its foot and backing against the wagon. The men looked up at Husk.

  “Monster!” Husk called. “Help! Monster!”

  The men kept staring at him.

  Husk gritted his teeth as he ran. They were no help to him. They hadn’t seen this thing before. He took a gasp and shouted, “Run!”

  The horse let out a horrified whinny. It leaped forward, and the brake on the wagon gave way. Horse and wagon bolted, running up the street toward town. One man ran after it, hollering swears. The other two just kept staring at Husk with gaping mouths.

  As he got closer, he realized their wide eyes were latched behind him. He risked a glance back over his shoulder.

  The monster was there, bounding on its thick legs. It held two wide branches torn from a tree, shading itself with leaves that shook as it ran. Wherever the sunlight reached, its furry hide charred and gave off greenish smoke.

  Husk turned back to running. Sunlight hurt it, but not enough, it seemed, to deter the monster from hunting him down. He imagined what it would do to him if it got one of its enormous hands on him. One would wrench his head from his neck, the other snap his spine.

  “Run!” Husk repeated as he came to the gate of the lumberyard.
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  The men seemed to come back to life. They took his advice and chased after the horse and wagon toward the main part of town.

  Inside, the lumberyard was deserted. The men there before must have been the foreman and a hand talking with a lumberjack. He had been wise enough to spend his day cutting wood rather than join in the monster hunt; he was wise again in heeding Husk’s warning.

  The yard was covered by stacks of twelve-foot logs of every kind of tree local to Gloriana and a few that must have been brought downriver. Wooden wedges had been hammered into the bottom of each stack to keep the round trunks in place. A hammer still lay next to a stack of cedar.

  Husk felt himself smile with his open mouth as he gasped for air. He ran for the hammer and scooped it up with both hands.

  As he turned around, he saw the monster cross into the yard. Its shark-toothed mouth howled as it ran. Smoke trailed from its legs and back where sunlight slipped through the waving branches.

  Husk hefted the hammer and swung it at the side of a wedge under a stack of cedar. The two met with a loud thud. The wedge shuffled, and the cedar trunks groaned, but the pile held.

  Husk glanced back over his shoulder. The monster was just yards away. There was no time to grab something heavier. He had to do it himself.

  “Come on,” Husk said to the hammer. “Once more.”

  He lifted the hammer with his weary hands, took a breath, and spun around completely. When the hammer hit the side of the wedge, it popped. Husk dropped the mallet and threw himself past the edge of the falling cedar. The woodpile gave way, trunk after trunk tumbling over one another with increasing thunderous clamor. One hit Husk’s body on his leg hard enough to knock him down.

  The ground was packed hard with a thousand footfalls of humans and horses. He rolled over to avoid the pain and saw the monster’s twisted face.

  Husk screamed, and then the face was gone, replaced by a tidal wave of ruddy cedar. Clanking wood drowned out the monster’s roar, which turned into a pained squeal as the trunks buried him. After a moment more of clamor, the wood came to a rest. A cloud of dust lingered above.

  Even though his lungs burned, Husk kept his mouth clamped shut. He could feel his nostrils flaring. The dust stung his eyes as he looked over the trunks.

  Shouts came from behind him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What happened?”

  “A pile fell!”

  “Hey, you!”

  Husk turned around slowly. Men in coveralls and leather aprons were running out of the sawmills. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t speak. All he could do was take deep gasps of dusty air. He coughed.

  The first millworker arrived and slapped him on the back. “Are you all right?”

  Husk shook his head and coughed again.

  The second stopped a few feet away. “Anyone under that?”

  He looked up and then back at the woodpile. The cedar trunks rested at odd angles on top of one another. One of the monster’s branches poked up with its tip broken.

  Husk went back to breathing. A single tree in the woods hadn’t been enough to kill the beast, but it seemed a dozen just might have done it.

  A third millworker stepped cautiously onto a trunk with his arms spread for balance. Husk held up a weak hand to try to stop him. The man didn’t notice. He looked at something past his feet.

  The millworker took a few steps, leaned over, and drew in a hand to cover his eyes. “I think someone was down there!”

  “No,” Husk said between gulps of air.

  “What’d he say?”

  “No human,” Husk tried to tell them.

  The woodpile shifted. The man standing on them lost his balance and yelped as he fell. Smoke poured out from among the trunks.

  The workers shouted. Husk heard himself whisper, “Run.”

  “What’d you say?” a voice asked.

  Husk took in a deep breath and shouted, “Run!”

  As if animated by his cry, the monster burst out from under the cedar trunks. It hefted an entire trunk on its shoulders. As it came to its full height, the cedar tumbled to the pile around its feet. Its gaping mouth, now missing several shark-teeth, gave a roar that made Husk’s ears ring.

  Men shrieked. Husk pushed himself to his feet and ran again.

  Crushing the monster wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt it deep. The boar spear had been metal, so had the bayonets that slashed it. If the logs couldn’t kill it, maybe the blades that cut them would.

  Husk dashed toward the sawmill resting at the back of the yard near the river. Black smoke poured out of the stacks above the huge furnaces blotting out the sun in perpetual twilight over the mill.

  The front of the mill was open outside of a few wooden columns, allowing men to bring in tree trunks from any direction. Half-cut boards, flat on one side and rounded on the other rested against the brick floor. In the center of the wide room, under a series of hooks on chains that led to pulleys, was the massive main blade. It sang out a low note as it spun so fast Husk couldn’t see the individual teeth. Smaller blades whirled with more highly pitched squeals.

  The workers had left the blades turning. A fallen log pile could well have been lethal, and Husk couldn’t blame them for wanting to help. Now they were screaming and running in every direction with the smoking monster taking swings at them with its wounded arms.

  If only I could just run away. But I don’t want to live in a world with that thing running around.

  He let his boots skid to a stop on the brick. The shade of the mill seemed dark, even compared with the smoky shade outside.

  “Over here, you piece of filth!” Husk shouted.

  The monster raised its head. It turned toward him, made a snorting snarl, and charged with both arms waving.

  Husk bit his lips. He turned back to the mill and ran for the hooks dangling along a track. They allowed just a couple of men to push a trunk weighing more than a ton like it was a few pounds. He hoped it would do the same for a monster. There wouldn’t be any other way to direct it into a spinning blade unless he went in first.

  Husk took a chain in his hands. The iron felt cool. He held several links and drew up to the hook in his other hand. The monster wasn’t going to give him more than one chance.

  Its roar from just behind woke him from his thoughts. Husk dashed toward the huge saw in the center and climbed onto the wooden guide platform set with cork rollers. His boots still squished out bayou water against the floor of sawdust and brick.

  Rafters shook as the monster stomped into the mill. It had to duck its ugly head under the roof.

  Husk gave a shout of his own and jumped, throwing himself toward the monster. The chain caught tight just before he hit the floor, and the force swung him around. The monster’s roar stopped as its enormous feet stumbled trying to change direction.

  The chain began to swing back. Husk turned around on it, just as he had on the rope at the old swimming hole as a boy. The thrill of those days came back into his heart, and he drove the hook’s tip into the monster’s back. It gave a howl so loud Husk felt something in his right ear pop. Stabbing pain filled his head.

  He refused to let it stop him. Husk let go of the hook and fell to the floor. As soon as his boots touched brick, he ran, carrying the end of the chain with both hands.

  The chain caught, and the monster gave another roar of pain. It waved its hands, trying to reach the hook in the small of its back.

  Husk pulled as hard as his thin arms could. The monster’s huge body gave way, and it fell face-first onto the guide platform.

  “Come on!” Husk shouted at himself. He dug his boots between the bricks and kicked his legs, gradually building speed as he drew the chain on. It dragged the monster’s body across the cork rollers toward the spinning blade.

  Husk couldn’t hear anything over the whining of the blades, but he did feel the monster shift. He didn’t waste energy looking back and kept pulling. The ringing tone of the blade became lower as it me
t something to cut. Then the monster scream’s drowned out even that.

  Husk kept pulling until the chain loosened again and the blade’s cry became high again. Then he let out a burst of air. His whole body was washed by a wave of joy.

  He dropped the chain and took two long, low steps until he slid to the floor. Gasping for air again, Husk turned around.

  The monster lay face down on the platform, the hook still stuck in its back. One arm rested behind its back, reaching for the chain. The other dangled over the edge.

  Husk squinted in the shadowy mill. He couldn’t see what had been cut. Maybe the blade had gone into the body, but not through.

  Taking a couple of breaths to steady himself, Husk stood up. He didn’t let his eyes leave the slumped body of the monster. Slowly, he took in the carnage.

  The blade hadn’t cut its body, just its leg, which was completely severed. It lay behind the platform, oozing the same gray matter as its arm had. There was no blood.

  Husk swallowed. Perhaps cutting off a leg was enough to end its horrid life. He had to be sure.

  Husk took three steps back toward the chain that led to the hook in the monster’s back. Husk’s hand shook as he reached for the chain.

  Just as his fingers came around the iron, the monster gave a huffing grunt. Husk dropped the chain and scurried backward until he hit the back wall of the mill.

  The monster drew itself up crookedly, balancing on one wounded arm before going onto the next. When it came to a sitting position, it leaned to reach and then wrenched the hook out of its back. Its puffy head fell back, and it gave a loud, pained howl.

  Husk covered his ears with his hands. He pressed them tight against his head to keep them from shaking.

  The monster coughed and spat out waves of foul stink. It then reached down and picked up its lost leg with a clawed hand. Its other hand gripped its stump. With a stiff grunt, the monster shoved the two together.

  Its head rocked back with another roar of pain. Still, it pushed. After a long moment, the monster stopped roaring and looked down. Its toes wriggled.