by Jeff Provine
“Take care of them,” Nate called to her.
Ozzie smiled. She didn’t know why.
“Stop him, you fools!” Burr shouted. His hand flopped, grasping at the levers to turn his pedestal around. “He’s plotting something!”
The soldiers charged. As they came close, however, they began to drop back, shielding their faces against the heat. One made it within a yard of Nate, and then his shirtfront burst into flames. Another scream was added to the cacophony.
Burr growled. “Marshals! Seize him!”
Ticks and Davies looked at the fire and then back at the governor. They didn’t move.
“Deserters! Weaklings!” Burr cried. “I’ll do it myself!”
He jammed his bony hand onto the brass levers. A squeal broke out from beneath his pedestal, and it rolled forward faster and faster. Two soldiers still blinded by the flames were knocked out of the way. Burr reached toward Nate. The fire turned the steel red.
Just beyond Burr’s grasp, Nate stepped off into the flames. He didn’t seem to fall. He hung there amid the glow.
Burr’s steel machine drove him over the short gray-stone wall. It flipped, and he began to scream. The fire swallowed him up, he and his machine warping until the two came apart. Burr’s body did fall at first, but then it, too, floated in the fire. His life-supporting throne burned away into ash. The scream never stopped.
Burr flailed. His thin hands reached for Nate, but they couldn’t grasp him. Nate only looked on. The shadow of an enormous hand reached up for Burr’s writhing body and grasped him. It pulled him down into the depths.
Ozzie’s eyes stung from staring into the fire, and she turned away. Tears rolled out between her eyelids. Suddenly there were piercing screams, the genuine fearful call of people. The soldiers holding her let go, and she opened her eyes again.
The writhing mass of hellions beneath her had broken apart. Instead of acting as Burr’s infernal army, now they were independently lashing out at the crowd. Some of the green-jacketed men of the militia attempted to fight back. Most fled.
One of the bullwagons started up, spitting out a rush of smoke as pistons began to grind. It charged into the fray, its huge metal bulk crushing several hellions in its path. Militiamen slipped into its wake, stabbing the fallen monsters with their bayonets. A huge hellion with the head of a goat and clawed hands the size of its own body grabbed under the wagon and lifted, flipping it up and over onto its back. The monsters that had fallen still fought despite being stabbed over and over.
Ozzie turned back to the balcony. The hunchbacks were creeping toward the marshals. They wore the menacing smiles of creatures who have borne a thousand injuries.
“Stay back!” Ticks ordered. “You must obey my commands!”
Biggs growled in return. His voice spilled out like flies on a corpse. “Our contract was with Burr, and he is ours now. Soon you will be, too.”
Parvis made a squealing giggle.
Ticks whipped up the revolvers they had stolen earlier. They were reloaded now, and the marshal in the black suit unloaded every chamber into the monsters. Other marshals joined in, firing a barrage that flooded the balcony with lead and smoke. The blasts caused several of them to fall backward, but then they returned to their slow, menacing advance.
Davies turned and fled. The others broke rank, too, but it only seemed to make the hunchbacks more eager. They pounced.
Biggs took Ticks up by an arm and the opposite leg. The marshal swung helplessly in the air, kicking Biggs with everything he had.
Parvis grabbed the free arm as he dangled in the air. He pulled, and Ticks’s body convulsed. He stopped kicking.
“I’ll get you both for this,” Ticks said. “I’m going to—” His hateful words became a pained scream, and then his body tore in two.
Davies fell next, screaming until the pig-faced demon bit a fist-sized chunk of flesh from his throat. The other marshals were ripped part by tooth and claw and stinger.
“Your bayonets, men!” the captain of Burr’s guard shouted in a voice that cracked with fear.
Only a few soldiers reacted. They fumbled to assemble their weapons and establish a line. The others fell back or dropped their weapons to run.
“No,” Ozzie heard Husk say in a groan. “It’s no good.”
She rushed to the newspaperman’s side. Blake was there, too, staring open-mouthed into the fire.
Ozzie knelt down to pull on Husk’s shoulders. “Maybe if you help, I can pick you up. I’ll take Blake by the hand, and we’ll get out of here.”
Husk shook his head weakly. “There’s no good running. Evil follows wherever you go. You have to stop it, Miss Ozzie. Stop them.”
Ozzie looked back over her shoulder. The soldiers held their bayonets like a wall of sharp steel. The monsters kept coming, allowing themselves to be stabbed in order to take a swipe at their mortal bodies. One by one, the soldiers were dying.
“Psalms,” Husk said. “You can stun them with Psalms.”
Ozzie sputtered. “I don’t know any Psalms!”
Husk closed his eyes and sighed.
She breathed faster and faster. Her head spun. Monsters were everywhere, and they were all bearing down on her. It was the end of the world.
Sing, a voice told her.
“I don’t know what to sing!” she cried.
A melody slipped into her mind, a distant memory of Tabitha at work in the kitchen before her father sent her away. She hummed and sang a song that always made Ozzie feel strangely good, even when she was too young to understand the words.
Ozzie took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...”
A chorus of hisses and groans came from the monsters.
“...that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Ozzie opened her eyes. The creatures were cringing and falling backward. Several had hands and claws pressed against their ears.
The soldiers turned toward her and gaped with hopeful expressions.
She laughed. Ozzie stood tall and sang as loudly as she could, “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed!”
Soldiers pressed the hunchbacks with their blades. The monsters seemed wounded, but their powerful bodies refused to give up.
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come,” Ozzie sang. She knew what the words meant now; she felt them to her very core. “Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
Other voices were joining in now. One of the soldiers seemed to know the song, and more were calling up from the crowd below. Monsters in spots began to writhe and retreat back toward the fire.
“The Lord has promised good to me. His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures.”
Other monsters charged forward, tearing through the voiceless and causing singers to falter. Their twisted bodies ripped through the iron-coated walls of the bullwagons and flung the bodies of soldiers unable to flee.
“Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, I shall profess,” she sang so loudly that her chest hurt, “within the veil, a life of joy and peace.”
This was a battle of faith, and Ozzie didn’t know how long she could hold onto the tune.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Clancy Blake stared into the fires of hell. He knew there was a great deal going on around him, sounds of screaming, fighting... and even singing? He ignored it all. The world beyond the flames kept his whole attention.
When he saw the explosion on the levee, it had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have been looking back at the fire pit they had dug at all, but he could not help checking to see that the fire hadn’t just gone out again. Then the catalyst took, and he saw horrors in the flash.
Seeing the monsters in the trees had evaporated all he understood of the world. The things in this fire went be
yond the material; peering into hell was too much. There he saw living embodiments of greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, wrath, envy, and pride. Horrible monstrosities swarmed, preening themselves of bleeding scabs, attacking one another to bite off pieces, stealing those pieces, and cavorting in a tangled busyness that seemed to last an eternity even in the single flash. Worst of all, he thought he had seen people among the monsters doing just the same.
It had struck him to the core. Evil seemed simply too powerful to overcome. He wanted to look away to protect himself. That selfishness somehow magnified his every flaw. He felt naked. Simply doing the right thing wasn’t good enough. He was painting a mural on a crumbling wall. There was no way he could ever hope to escape evil.
Soldiers had come (or was it the police?) and dragged him away in a wooden box. Voices spoke, and people walked in front of his staring eyes, but he didn’t wake up again until the fire came back. It was different now, a little hazier, with shows of evil slipping in and out.
Suddenly Nate Kemp had walked into it. He had tried to call out to the young man, to warn him, but it stuck in his throat. Voices told him it was yet another in his lifetime of failures. Even the little good he had done was nothing compared to the great overwhelming tide of wickedness all around him.
Burr went into the fire as well. It took him and destroyed the machine that had kept him alive so much longer than he should have. Pride and greed.
Yet Kemp wasn’t hurt. He stood among the flames, and the things in it seemed to be afraid. Someone was there with him. Blake couldn’t see who it was, but somehow he knew.
All of Blake’s fears of evil melted away. Mortal strength was nothing, but just as there was evil beyond, there was good.
Kemp pulled off his coveralls to dump out the catalyst that had spilled inside. There was another flash of light, and the fires winked out under a huge and growing cloud. Rather than a deafening crash, it was the sound of a rushing wind that ended in a whisper.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nate Kemp fell to his hands and knees. The stone was smooth and warm against his bare skin. It was embarrassing to be sitting out in public in his underwear, but that didn’t matter. He had done his work. He had been willing to give up his life, and it had been given back to him as a gift.
He had been on that train for a reason. Everything happened for a reason. Ways were mysterious, but they made the world work.
Nate took a deep breath of air. He didn’t know how long he had been gone, but his body ached as if he hadn’t breathed in minutes. The air was warm and smoky, stinking of hellions.
Nate stood. Burr was gone. The politicians had disappeared along with many of the soldiers while a faithful few stayed fighting the hunchbacks. They were singing, led by Ozzie Jacey, who held her hands to her mouth calling out with every ounce of volume she could muster. Her voice was beautiful.
His shackles were gone. He didn’t remember losing them, but he imagined the flames ate them away. The rest of him was protected by something he couldn’t begin to understand.
Nate turned to look over the balcony’s edge. The mall was still crowded, even though people on the edges had fled. The militia fought with all its might to keep the monsters from tearing more deeply into the huddled civilians unable to escape.
Nate pursed his lips. There was still work to be done.
Sheriff Blake stood up from beside Husk, who was unconscious, his limp hands still holding the gunshot wound to the leg. Blake gasped out words as if they were the first he’d spoken in months. “Are you all right?”
Nate nodded. “I’m fine.”
He glanced back at Ozzie, who was watching him with wide bright eyes. She continued singing, pouring out her soul.
Nate mouthed, “Thank you.”
A joyful tear slipped down the side of her nose, and she turned back to the song.
Nate strode forward to the edge of the balcony. Burr’s speaking trumpet lay where the soldiers had dropped it. He kicked it out of the way.
He looked north to the levee, which stood dented from the explosion. Their plan had been a good one, but the task was beyond human hands. Nate fell prostrate. There was so much beyond him; it was arrogance to think anything else.
When he stood again, he raised both hands high. “Let it be washed clean.”
A white light pierced the sickly orange clouds from above. Wherever it touched, the smoke boiled away like steam. It drove down to the edge of the crater that now stood on the levee. Terrible thunder rolled.
The battle ceased. Humans and hellions alike looked up in awe of the might of Heaven. Every eye watched as the light broke up earth and stone. The pieces dropped away, freeing up a new layer that was itself soon swept away by a fierce wind.
At last the light stopped. The water had been held back until it was done, and then it erupted out. The weight of the lake pushed it with enormous pressure out toward the empty factories. Steel and brick shattered under the moving mass of the water. Towers collapsed and buildings fell into themselves. There was no distinguishable sound of breaking; it was all the same rushing din.
The wave broke up as it rolled through the rubble and dove into the streets. Block after block flooded, pushing carts out of the way and causing people to clamber upstairs. It flowed, unstoppable, past the capitol and at last into the mall.
Water washed over the people, buffeting them this way and that. Parents and even strangers grabbed up children and held them overhead as the chest-deep flood swept past. The sparklers and lanterns were extinguished, ending the glow of burnished gold and spreading genuine night.
At last the water crashed into the hellions. While it passed over the people, the monsters gave horrific screams of pain. Their bodies gave way, melting as if they were made from sand. The tide swept them up, dissolving them into nothing and banishing them back to the Abyss.
On the balcony, Nate felt Ozzie take his arm. He held her hand. The water splashed against the bare stone walls of the City Center, rushing backward over the squirming masses that were left of the once nightmarish hordes.
Behind him, Blake gave a triumphant cry. “Yeehoo!”
He scooped up a bayoneted musket from where a fallen soldier had dropped it and charged at the hunchbacks. Soldiers echoed his heroic shout and joined in behind him. Kemp found a weapon of his own, but he stood back with Ozzie.
The monsters had not yet recovered from Ozzie’s song and the severe lashings of the bayonets. Parvis clambered on his oddly long arms to his stubby feet just as Blake stabbed him straight through his enormous mouth. The sheriff leaned into the strike and twisted, driving the hunchback’s small body toward the railing of the balcony. With a final shove, Blake tossed Parvis down into the churning waters.
The little hunchback squealed until he was swallowed by the waves. His body popped up once, already scalded down to twisted bones, and sank again. He was gone.
Soldiers attacked the other monsters, driving them over the edge after Parvis. The snakelike creature attempted to flee, but a soldier caught it barehanded by one of the slithering tail-legs. He pulled, cracking the snake’s sinister body like a whip. It fell wobbling into the water.
The fat hunchback with the scorpion’s tail tried to fight, driving his stinger clear through the arm of one of the soldiers. A wave of blood and black venom poured out of his green uniform. He cried out, and his fellow soldiers dashed to his side. One blade after the other drove into the monster’s belly, spilling gray ooze that was too thick to be blood. They shouted and pushed, finally toppling it, too, over the edge.
Soldiers pressed Biggs despite him knocking one after the other away with his gigantic arms. They kept after him until he threw out his wings with a loud roar. The force knocked over Blake despite the sheriff charging full tilt. The monster ran over the balcony and leaped into the air. His wings caught the wind, and he sailed out over the water. His black, matted fur blended with the shadows until he disappeared into the night. Someone shot at him, but Nate didn’t see whet
her the bullet landed.
There were other monsters that managed to escape. Ones with wings already airborne, followed after Biggs or darted off in their own directions. The darkness swallowed them up.
Blake held the musket over his head and shouted a breathy cry of victory. Soldiers circled him and called down to the militia, who sloshed through the water and pulled down the few monsters left wailing as they clung to the walls.
Nate let out a long sigh, emptying out all the tense energy he had kept up in his body. There was still much work to be done, but, for now, it was over. Ozzie took him by the shoulder and leaned heavily. He took her by the waist to hold her.
People on the mall were picking themselves up, hugging one another. It was strangely quiet as everyone spoke in whispered tones. Most sat in the water, welcoming it as a change from the constant smoke that filled their lives. The waters receded, gradually working their way through more streets toward the docks on the river. Fires were doused, and the trademark orange-gray smoke dissipated slowly. A few stars shone in the sky. Lake Providence would have its first genuine night in all the years Nate Kemp could remember.
“What do we do now?” Ozzie asked, her voice ragged.
Nate shrugged. “We live our lives.”
Chapter Thirty
It was Sunday morning.
Birds sang in the warm sunlight. The breeze in the air was cool, and it smelled sweet, the scent of a world after a purifying rain.
Nate Kemp awoke with a smile. He tried to move his stiff body, and his smile turned into a grimace. He’d spent the night sleeping on the floor.
“Why would,” he mumbled before the events of the past night flooded his mind. He shuddered under their weight.
Doilies rested on thin-legged end tables and over the back of the sofa where the sheriff had slept. He was at the Johnsons’ home, a two-story townhouse two blocks over on Moore Street.