"I think we've heard enough," Dan laughed.
Jaron slapped Dan on the back like he was congratulating him on winning a prizefight. As if the slap was a signal, a gust of wind whipped through the square.
"Sound some alarms! Defend the fuggin' gates!" Chuggie barked.
He did a double take as another mob filed into the square from the south. Their dirty carnival-tent coats told him all he needed to know: the Carnies had arrived. Chuggie couldn't make out what their leader shouted, but it didn't sound happy. Without the Steel Jacks on hand, looked like the Carnies were ready to rise up.
The two crowds collided in the middle of the square. Even Dan had nothing to say. His mouth hung open. The mobs surged into each other. People shoved and shouted. Fists flew. Bodies slammed into each other. The screams of the battling masses grew louder as if fueled by the rising wind. Overhead, a crack of thunder signaled the clouds to release the rain. Cold water poured from the heavens.
"Lemme down, you cock-faced pigs!" Chuggie flailed and fought as the guardsmen tried to hoist him up. The wet rope slipped through their hands. "She's coming, damn you!" Chuggie shouted as loud as he could, but the noise of the crowd and the storm swallowed up his voice. He absorbed rain through his pores. Strength seeped into his body, drop by drop.
"Quiet, dead man," a guardsman shouted.
The guards tried to hoist Chuggie again.
An explosion ripped through Stagwater. The ground shook, throwing people down on the cobblestone. The streetlights sputtered out.
"The methane plant!" A woman shrieked. Her voice was swallowed up by another blast. Orange flames and impenetrable black smoke rose into the sky.
The guardsmen jumped down from the dais.
Dan grabbed Chuggie by the throat. "Did you do this? Did you bomb the fucking methane plant?"
"Stinkface, I have told yer ass about as many ways as I can think of. I am not attacking Stagwater. The witch is, an' she has an army with her. Now think about those words, an' think about what they mean when you run 'em all together in a pile." Chuggie went to blow smoke in Dan's face, then remembered he wasn't smoking.
Jaron picked up the bone dagger at his feet and stabbed it in Chuggie's direction. Chuggie turned so the blade glanced off his chain. He grabbed Jaron's wrist and squeezed. With his other hand, he grabbed a fistful of Jaron's stomach flesh. "Not a good idea, Mutt."
Jaron didn't have time to scream as the moisture left his body. Even the rain couldn't save him from his dry demise.
Chuggie bent down and retrieved the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu from Jaron's shriveled hand, then snapped his head around to Dan, who leapt back out of arm's reach.
The drunkenness melted away once more. Chuggie's desire to drink large quantities subsided. His mind raced, processing many thoughts at the same time. The invisible geometry returned, and so did the blood that poured from his mouth. He welcomed its iron taste.
Another explosion racked the city, and a towering trio of smokestacks crumbled. Billows of dust and debris rose up from the wreckage. Lightning flashed, illuminating terrified screaming faces.
"You killed him!" Dan wailed. "Murderer!" He kept his eyes on his mummified friend.
"He tried to kill me, so I stopped him." Chuggie kept one eye on the young man as he readjusted his chain and anchor. "You remember that."
Dan bounded off the dais and vanished into the stampeding crowd. Three guardsmen took fighting stances around Chuggie. In light of Jaron's demise, however, none were willing to attack first.
"For the love o' hell, quit worryin' over Chuggie! You got a fight on your hands, but it ain't with me."
A new breed of terrified screams filled the square as Shola's scarecrows poured in. Citizens kicked and screamed as the scarecrows dove on top of them. They fought with umbrellas and sticks and rocks. The scarecrows piled on them and tore them apart.
Wind, rain, thunder, screams, explosions — Stagwater shook with the sounds of chaos.
Chuggie shoved past the indecisive guardsmen and rushed headlong into the scarecrows.
◊ ◊ ◊
As the city erupted in chaos, Rorid and Priole fled the square. Rorid had seen quite enough to know this was the time to leave. After all, if an invasion of animated scarecrows wasn't a sign to walk away, what was? He did his very best not to think about the actual likelihood of escape. It must have taken powerful conjury indeed to give life to all those scarecrows. Meeting their master was not something that interested him.
"I'm getting my son and getting on a boat," Rorid said as they ran. "I'm advising you to get your wife and meet me at my house. Bring any weapons you can carry. Hurry!"
Priole sprinted off to his house at double Rorid's top speed. The young man truly had amazing physical gifts.
Rorid burst into his house. "Move, move, move! Let's go, Drexel. It's time for a boat ride."
"What are you yelling about?" Drexel called out in a sleepy voice.
"I'm yelling about get your ass up! We're leaving now, boy." Rorid slung his duffle over his shoulder.
Drexel trotted out from his room, rubbing his eyes and dragging a bulging bag.
"What's in that?" Rorid grabbed the bag.
"Just what I need to survive, like you said."
Rorid yanked open the bag. "Books? Damn it all, boy, I meant clothes, boots, and food!"
Drexel looked wounded. "I guess I misunderstood."
Rorid set the bag down and started pitching books out. He yanked Drexel's heavy winter coat off the rack and stuffed it inside.
Drexel picked up his journal, along with his favorite novel. "Can I have these two?" he asked sheepishly.
Rorid grabbed them and shoved them into the bag with little concern for their well-being.
They jammed their arms in their raincoats and ran to the door as Priole and his wife Ree came splashing up the street. The four of them charged into the downpour.
◊ ◊ ◊
In the square, wind blew debris off the rooftops. The rain gave no hint of letting up, but also did little to extinguish burning buildings.
Anchor in one hand and dagger in the other, Chuggie fought the scarecrow horde. Stagwater's guardsmen joined the fight. They jabbed and slashed and bludgeoned until they pushed the scarecrow line back out of the square. Smashed pumpkin heads littered the street. Pieces of ruined scarecrows lay in defeated heaps.
"We've got them now!" someone shouted.
Chuggie spat blood at the idiotic bravado, bashing his anchor through two of the witch's soldiers.
It was then he heard a familiar voice shriek, "Kill them all!"
The witch emerged from the stormy darkness, driving several dozen of her monstrous warriors before her. Shola rode atop a spider fashioned from more scarecrows. She waved the goat-face purse over her head as she crowed her orders.
"Retreat!" Chuggie shouted.
The other fighters gave no hint that they'd heard him. Several had yet to look up and see the witch with her honor guard.
Chuggie knew he needed to fall back. The street was simply too narrow and crowded for his anchor to be effective. He was as likely to bash it through human heads as scarecrows.'
"Get back to the square!" he barked. Only a handful joined his retreat.
Shola's scarecrows flooded the street, scaled the buildings, and swarmed over the fighters.
The witch charged on her spider, cackling madly. She burst into the square as twin explosions rocked buildings behind her.
"Get the spider!" Chuggie howled. His voice cracked, and his throat burned with each word.
A spider leg snatched a wounded guardsman and thrust him up to the witch. He yowled in pain and struggled uselessly in its nightmarish grasp. She forced him to look into the purse and threw her head back in howling laughter.
She let go of the guard, and he fell to the ground with a sickening crunch. He kicked in the mud and wrapped his hands around his own throat.
Shola's gaze fell on Chuggie. "You! My fondest love, it's time
to die!"
Chuggie spun the anchor over his head. His other hand held the dagger ready to attack. He charged at her, and she at him. The anchor beat down one scarecrow, then another and another, as the witch's mocking laughter sliced through the noise.
◊ ◊ ◊
Priole threw out his arms and skidded to a stop at the door to the Stagwater orphan house. Children's terrified screams spilled out of broken windows.
"We can't linger!" said Rorid, but he couldn't believe those cowardly words had come from his own mouth.
"Just cover the street." Priole dashed to the door. "I won't be long." He ran up the steps and kicked in the door. He activated his shockspear and held it up like a torch as he ran into the building.
Rorid thumbed his own shockspear to life. He guided Drexel and Ree into the entryway of the orphanage, where they clung together shaking. He kept watch in the doorway as the screams of children rose and fell inside the building.
A minute later, a whole flock of footsteps pattered down the hall. Priole herded a dozen or so terrified children back to the door. He held his left hand close to his stomach. Rorid's heart sank upon seeing all of their little torturgy masks.
"Got these ones." Priole gave the shockspear a masterful one-handed twirl.
A terrified little girl clutching a rag doll heaved and sobbed.
Ree fell to her knees and embraced her. "It's going to be okay, honey." As the girl threw her arms around her neck. Ree cast a worried gaze at Priole.
"What happened back there?" Rorid asked.
"Scarecrows attacking kids. Don't go back there, Captain." Priole sniffed. His eyes looked a tiny bit glassy. "Too late."
Drexel had a hand on the shoulders of two scrawny, dazed runts. "We're gonna be fine, boys. We have the two bravest, strongest guardsmen in Stagwater to protect us. Can you little soldiers stay brave for me?" They nodded, but their glazed eyes made them look as if they didn't understand a word he'd said.
"You're injured." Ree, with the little girl still clinging to her neck, grabbed Priole's shockspear and held its glowing tip up to his arm so she could see.
"Damn scarecrow," said Priole. "Clawed my arm. I'll be fine, though." He pushed the shockspear away.
With one hand, Priole was probably better with a shockspear than Rorid was with two. Seeing the younger man clutch his stomach that way had given Rorid a scare. It wasn't so bad if he just had a little injury to his arm.
"We've got to get out of here." Priole cast a worried look over his shoulder.
The group moved out of the building and down the street as a unit. Drexel grabbed the hand of a wild-eyed boy who was lagging behind. "It's going to be okay," he said to the kid. "We'll be on that boat in no time."
Having the children in tow cut their speed in half. Rorid didn't like it, but he wasn't about to cut them loose.
Nearing the square, Rorid raised his hand. "Sounds like trouble ahead." He waved the group off the street and into the shadows between two parked oxcarts.
"What's your move?"
"I'm going to go forward and have a look. You stay here with the group."
Priole saluted and took a defensive position atop one of the oxcarts as Rorid dashed ahead to scout the square.
A battle raged between the people of Stagwater and an army of huge, lumbering scarecrows. The streetlights were dark, but burning buildings lit the square despite the pouring rain.
A pair of the scarecrows charged him. The long-legged one outpaced its broad companion. Its carved-pumpkin head had some missing chunks.
Rorid activated his shockspear, drew it back, and slashed it through the faster of the two. The thing erupted in a spray of woodchips and crackling blue electricity. Its head splatted onto the street.
He swung at the second, but it dove at his legs and tackled him. He collapsed on top of it. It bucked him off, and he landed on his feet. With a flourish, Rorid spun the blade across the scarecrow's chest. Like its companion, it blew apart. Blue energy crackled over it.
Rorid stared in disbelief. Scarecrows everywhere. Hordes of them. He and Priole could have fought their way through, sure, but not Drexel and Ree, and especially not the orphans. Somehow Haste, Kale, and all their rich cronies were to blame for all of this.
He jogged back to his little pack of refugees.
"We can't get to the docks through the square." Rorid kept his voice low as he spoke to Priole. "If it was just the four of us, I'd say maybe. We'd be lucky to get one of the children across there."
"What do we do?" Priole hopped down from his perch on the oxcart.
"That's the Steel Jacks' headquarters right there." Rorid pointed to the menacing, metal-encased building. "We go in there, go through the passage beneath the square, and come out at the Municipal Building. Then we're right on top of the docks. We herd the kids onto a boat and float downstream to Sword Falls or Kendrid."
"The jail is under the square. Are we going to parade all these kids by those bastards in there?"
"You have a better idea?"
Priole shook his head.
Rorid spoke up so the others could hear: "Everybody, we're going into this building and taking a path that leads underneath the square. When we come out the other side, we're getting on a boat. You kids, I want you all to get in a line and hold onto the shirt of the person in front of you. It might be dark where we're going."
A little orphan boy began to bawl. Drexel knelt down beside him. "Hey, hey, shhh. You see those two men right there?" Drexel pointed to Rorid and Priole. "They could each take on five Steel Jacks and win! Look at my dad. Monsters have nightmares about him! All the things you're scared of? They're scared of my dad. He wouldn't take us anywhere unless he knew it was safe."
They boy ceased his sobbing and dried his tears. Drexel put an arm around him and beamed at his father.
Drexel was an amazing son. Rorid could have shed a tear of pride, but that would have to wait.
When they got to the rear entrance of the Steel Jack building, Rorid pushed on the door. It swung open. Priole brought up the rear, and as the door closed behind him the chaos outside became muffled and distant. Flickering sconces shed their light on the dark metal walls and floor. The lobby stood empty, except for a handful of bloody guardsman corpses.
Rorid couldn't make out who these fallen guardsmen were, but he knew each man that wore the red and crimson. Whoever they were, they'd been his comrades.
The orphans cried and cringed as they stepped past the dead men. They fed each other's fears in a rising tide of terror. One of them stopped and refused to move further.
"We gotta move! We gotta move!" Priole's shouts could barely be heard among the cries of the orphans. When he crashed his shockspear against the wall, however, the flash and the crack and the shower of sparks got their attention.
"We'll all cry later, when we're safe." Rorid's voice echoed off the steel walls. "Right now we have to move!"
"It's going to be okay, I promise," Drexel said. "Just don't look and it's like nothings there."
The kids squeezed their eyes shut.
Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the wide expanse of the lobby. A barred gate blocked the stairway that led down into the sub-floors.
Rorid triggered the release on the wall and heaved with all his might. He couldn't slide it open, and his worried eyes turned to Priole.
The younger guardsmen handed his weapon to Rorid. His held his left arm tight to his stomach. With his right hand, he tried to shake the gate, but it held firm. He put a foot up on the wall and heaved on the gate. With one arm and one leg, Priole forced the gate sideways. As he grunted and huffed, it gave way. Even injured, the man was twice as strong as Rorid.
Rorid guided the troop down the dimly lit metal stairs. They entered a hallway lit by flickering blue light, not unlike that of the shockspears.
Rorid heard movement. He stopped the line and held his finger to his lips to signal for quiet. He stepped cautiously in the direction of the sound. He rounded the cor
ner.
A mass of quivering flesh emitted wet moans and grunts. Another flickering blue light shone down on the thing and the mirror next to it. A single word was written on the mirror in glowing Steel Jack paint: Haste.
Rorid covered his mouth, fighting the urge to vomit as he stepped closer. The thing had eyes. Human eyes. This bloody, trembling mass had once been a man. Rorid felt the room spin.
Haste, or what remained of him, stared blankly at his reflection.
"Sir," Priole called out. "Coming through?"
"No!" Rorid roared. "Hold your position."
The Steel Jacks hadn't left Haste with any means of locomotion. His leg muscles, if he really flexed them hard, served only to stretch open the vast cavern of his new mouth. Rorid gasped as Haste strained against his new physiognomy.
They'd left him with one semi-functioning arm, transformed into one long, multi-jointed claw. With great effort, the Haste thing could straighten the arm. With slightly less effort, he could curl it toward his mouth. At the end of it, all his digits had been removed except the middle finger. The flesh at the fingertip was stripped away, exposing the sharp white bone.
Rorid froze as the thing that had been Haste stretched its arm and mouth. He took a series of short, heavy breaths and let out a squeal. He pushed his legs, straining so hard the body shook violently, to stretch his mouth open further and further. Inch by inch, he worked legs and jaw, making the bones creak. A snap reverberated through the room as the lower jaw reached its breaking point, and split in two at the chin. Next, the jaw hinges popped out of their sockets. Haste let out a groan of equal parts agony and relief.
His leg muscles remained tight, keeping the jaw open. The finger at the end of his arm curled and uncurled. His airway sounded obstructed, almost as if he were snoring.
Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater Page 28