The arm curled in. The finger probed the back of the mouth, then the throat. Haste squeezed and pushed, shoving that bony claw further down and in. He gagged, over and over. His whole body convulsed. Gagging, choking, Haste clawed at his esophagus. The claw pushed in deeper.
Rorid could hear the sloppy, wet beating of Haste's heart.
Haste dug furiously.
The wet choking ceased, replaced by a quiet gurgling.
Rorid found a drop cloth on the floor. He threw it over the dead Haste thing and hurried back to the line of refugees.
"What happened?" Drexel's voice was a nervous whisper. "What did you see?"
Rorid felt like puking, but inside a kernel of something, satisfaction maybe, grew.
Chapter 24
Shola raged from atop her contorted perversion of a scarecrow spider.
The spider seized Chuggie and lifted him high. Chuggie fought free and tumbled over the spider's back. Before Shola could turn, he threw the anchor. The blow landed between the witch's shoulder blades.
She screeched with pain.
Shola tumbled from the seat and landed hard on the cobblestones. Her head hit the ground like a hammer. The bones in her neck cracked. Her arms flopped limply at her sides, useless as rags. She kicked her legs with ferocious passion and pushed herself in circles.
Chuggie pinned her shoulder with his knee and raised the bone dagger over his head.
He grabbed the goat-face purse from around her neck.
"You… you can't kill me!" She snarled and spat. "I control you now, Brother Drought."
"We'll see." Chuggie opened the purse and held it in front of her face.
Her eyes lit from within, brilliant blue and dazzling white. She gasped over and over as if a new breed of madness cascaded through her mind. Blood trickled from her nose and gushed from her eyes. A flash of lighting lit up the sky as bright as mid-day.
Chuggie raised the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu, gritted his teeth, and got tackled from behind by a scarecrow.
He somersaulted. Using the scarecrow's momentum, he swung to his feet. He kicked. His blow launched the scarecrow. It crashed into a pole and smashed into useless pieces.
Chuggie stuffed the goat-face purse into his armored satchel.
Dozens of scarecrows ran to help Shola. They hoisted her back up on the spider. She wailed and roared a stream of nonsense as if issuing commands. One of her minions held her head up. Broken bones poked through her leathery skin.
The spider stumbled and lurched like a drunk. Scarecrows, one after another, dropped their weapons, deflated, and collapsed to the ground. The injury to their mistress seemed to injure them too. Shola shrieked as her head flopped to the side and the spider crashed under her.
White-hot pain shot up Chuggie's leg, as if a thousand wasps had stabbed metallic stingers into his calf. Blinded, he slashed at the pain. The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu skewered a small creature. Lifting it up, he blinked. He blinked again until he was sure his vision was clear.
"In death, you will serve the Gooch!" the creature hissed at him.
Dread crawled up from Chuggie's belly and lodged in his throat. Maybe one of the skittering beasties had strayed from the Desecration? Maybe that's what happened —.
The Gooch thundered into the square, pounding his massive arm into the corner of a building. The structure collapsed, section by section, as if in slow motion. The Gooch stormed into the crowd.
The Gooch's desecrated minions swarmed into the plaza. They outnumbered, by far, man and scarecrow combined.
The storm pounded Stagwater with renewed savagery.
The citizens of Stagwater erupted in a fresh chorus of terrified screams.
"Get to the bridge! Get out of the city!" Chuggie roared. But no one could hear his shout.
The Gooch grabbed the living and the dead in his massive infant hands. He stuffed them into his mouth, devouring them with a gulp.
Chuggie raced across the square and headed for the bridge, shouting at those he passed to do the same.
He slammed to a stop. A face he knew blocked him, though its body was twisted and strange.
"Dawes?"
◊ ◊ ◊
With Rorid in the lead, the group raced out the back entrance of the Municipal Building and charged down to the dock.
No boats awaited them.
Consecutive flashes of lightning revealed little more than floating wood.
More lightning showed the bridge supports to be teeming with shadowy figures.
"We have to cross the bridge!" he called to his group. "And fast, before they tear it down!"
As they made their dash for the bridge, the horror and hopelessness of their situation crashed down on Rorid like a brick to the face. The scarecrows were no longer his biggest problem. An even bigger army of slimy, rotting abominations replaced them.
"Get to that bridge, people!" Rorid yelled. "That's our only damn chance!"
◊ ◊ ◊
Chuggie bashed the desecrated Dawes aside with a swing of the anchor.
Faben's former apprentice raised Faben's podium and screamed up at the sky. The two goat faces grafted to the sides of his head bleated with rage of their own. The kid was shirtless, and patches of goat hide mixed in with his skin. His midsection looked like it had been clawed open and glued back shut. Dribbles of black slime oozed from the seams.
"You still in there, Dawes?" Chuggie pointed with the bone dagger. He could see Dawes' invisible aura. It moved like slow fire, and tendrils poured out of it toward the Gooch.
"In death, you will serve the Gooch!" Desecrated Dawes lowered the podium blade and rushed at Chuggie.
Chuggie threw the anchor at Dawes' feet in an attempt to trip him up. The throw missed, but Chuggie snagged Dawes as he yanked the chain back.
Dawes veered off course. He stumbled.
Chuggie hacked at him with the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu.
Dawes deflected Chuggie's lunge with the podium blade. He swiped the podium prongs at Chuggie's stomach.
Chuggie dodged and grabbed the podium's shaft.
Dawes let it go and wrapped his hands around Chuggie's neck.
Dawes didn't seem to notice as Chuggie stabbed his stomach over and over.
"In death, you will belong to the Gooch!" Dawes squeezed Chuggie's neck.
Chuggie thought his desecrated breath could've choked a fuggin' Steel Jack.
Chuggie stabbed the prong end of the podium through Dawes' neck.
Dawes howled. He gripped the podium and tried to pull it out.
Chuggie wiggled free of Dawes' clutches and kicked him in the chest.
Dawes tumbled backward into a group of goatmen.
Chuggie jumped behind some overturned carts to hide out while he plotted a course to the bridge. There'd be nothing to gain from battling all day with Dawes and his squad of desecrated goatmen.
"This is for Jaron!" screamed a voice from behind him. Ragged and bloody, Stinkface Dan plunged a dagger into Chuggie's back.
The blade didn't stab Chuggie's heart. It was a weak blow in that respect. Weak or not, the pain brought him to his knees.
A frenzy of violence erupted in Chuggie. He jumped to his feet, spun, and grabbed the young man by the throat.
"Look me in the eye," Chuggie howled. "You could have lived through this."
Dan kicked and clawed.
Chuggie held tight. He pulled at Dan's water. The life in Dan's eyes guttered out as Chuggie reduced him to bones and tightly stretched leather. He flung Dan's corpse into the bedlam of the square to be trampled to bits.
Chuggie realized that he possessed fine control over his Drought power when he held the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu. It made perfect sense, but the notion didn't sit well. If he survived this night, he would have to study up on the bizarre artifact.
Up on the bridge, a couple of guardsmen struggled to get a scraggly bunch of kids across. Screaming children clutched each other. One lady, looking about ready to collapse, clung to a howling little girl. They were
innocent people running for their lives. Maybe somebody could make it out of this alive. Just maybe. Chuggie charged toward the embattled refugees.
The Gooch's roar shook the ground.
With the knife still sticking out of his back, Chuggie raced onto bridge. "Lemme at 'em, lemme at 'em," he hollered.
Chuggie readied his anchor for attack. The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu should have been slippery from the rain and the blood, but it stuck to his hand as if it'd been grafted there.
Just ahead, a weary guardsman hacked and slashed at the Gooch's abominations. He impaled a creature on his shockspear. The cackling beast pulled the spear into itself until it got within arm's reach of him. It wrapped its dead arms around him.
The guardsman lashed out, kicked and heaved. The monstrosity, shockspear and all, sailed over the side of the bridge.
Chuggie shoved past the guardsmen and lunged for the desecrated warriors.
"Thanks!" the guardsman yelled as he swung his remaining spear.
Chuggie was a whirlwind of bone and chain. His dagger slashed, his anchor bashed, and the desecrated beasties were torn asunder. It felt so easy and natural he could have laughed triumphantly, but he'd lost so much he didn't have any laughs left in him.
"Priole!" a voice yelled from behind him, "Cover the rear!"
"The bridge is clear," Chuggie shouted back. "Lead 'em across. Let me watch the backside." Chuggie squeezed by the fleeing refugees to cover their escape.
"What are you, drifter?" a guardsman shouted.
"Get these folks across the bridge," Chuggie said. "Somebody's got to make it."
◊ ◊ ◊
Dawes wanted only to please his god. The Gooch demanded living sacrifice.
The wooden men formed a circle around a screaming old woman. Dawes sensed great power within her. The wooden men tried to protect her, but they were too weak to withstand the onslaught of Desecration.
Dawes fought his way through the scarecrows. His summoner's podium chopped them into pieces with ease. When he reached the shrieking witch, he roared with delight. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to his lord.
She cursed him, but no curse could reach him through the unholy blessing of Desecration.
At the center of the square, the Gooch rocked its giant infant body back and forth. He gurgled and laughed while his minions piled bodies all around him. Some were carcasses, twisted, shattered, and missing parts. Some were bleeding and broken, but still alive. Some were the remnants of scarecrows.
In one hand, the Gooch held the limp body of a Stagwater guardsman. In the other, it held the demolished remains of a scarecrow. The Gooch's angry, rotten eyes moved back and forth between the two, as if seeing the potential of new playthings. He stuffed both in his mouth at once and grabbed up another pair.
"In death," the Gooch thundered to the city, "you will serve the Gooch."
He gobbled down more people, more scarecrows. Unholy digestion went to work in the Gooch's belly. It pushed the new creatures out the bottom of its vile digestive tract, birthing them in a slimy heap on the street.
In the driving rain and pooling blood, the first scarecrow-man crawled to its feet. Torn human flesh and cursed wooden limbs took their first steps. Another fell from the Gooch and plopped to the mud, then another and another. So were born the Scarecrows of Stagwater.
Dawes held the broken, screaming witch over his head in offering. The Gooch snatched her away and held her upside down. She flailed in the grip of the Gooch, screaming curses. The Lord of Desecration laughed in her face.
Dawes drank in the scene with something like joy. The gift had pleased his god. Dawes wished he could sacrifice himself again.
"Mine now," the Gooch rumbled to the broken old woman. "Love your new god."
"In death, you will serve the Gooch!" bleated Dawes.
His master devoured Shola's body, then shoved a handful of scarecrow parts down its throat after her.
Dawes watched with fascination as the Gooch's stomach shifted and churned. He longed to witness the vile digestion inside, to see her mind and body decay together — breaking down, but not completely. He wanted to taste her anguish as her soul died over and over, to hear her pleas for oblivion.
She splashed to the bloody mud in the square of Stagwater, transformed into something glorious. Eight wooden scarecrow arms clawed mindlessly at nothing at all. Eight empty eye sockets filled with rain as she wobbled to her feet. The witch no longer existed. In her place stood a newborn worshipper of the Gooch.
"I serve," she rasped.
"More!" boomed the Gooch.
Dawes savored the terror. He would share it with the world, all for the pleasure of his master. Off he lurched to find new offerings.
◊ ◊ ◊
Rorid headed up the surge across the bridge.
"We're almost there, Dad." Drexel herded the children. In the downpour, they slipped and tripped, but Drexel managed to keep them on their feet.
Behind the group, the chain-swinging stranger held the monstrosities at bay. Any that got by him faced Priole'se spinning shockspear. Rorid could swear, one-armed or otherwise, the young guardsman grew more devastating with each creature he slew.
Rorid pointed to the bank. "Gather the children over there."
Rorid, Ree, and Drexel ran with the children off the bridge and up the muddy logging road. They slid and stumbled but Ree and Drexel gathered them all in a shivering huddle.
"Where do we go now?" Drexel shivered. He'd given his raincoat to one of the orphans.
"Move them up the trail, son. Get them sheltered in the logging pavilion. I'll get Priole and the drifter. We'll be right behind you."
Rorid raced onto the bridge to help Priole and the stranger.
He stopped as if he'd hit a wall.
A thunderous crack, louder than any from the sky, ripped through the night. Tremors ran through the entire bridge as the support timbers started to give way.
"Get off the bridge!" Rorid shouted to Priole and the man with the weird horns on his hat.
The two fought side by side like no soldiers Rorid had ever seen, but their desecrated enemies attacked in an endless stream.
Howling, the drifter cleared a swath with his anchor, flinging ruined creatures through the air. Priole ducked under the swinging chain as if they'd practiced it all before.
"The damned bridge is going to fall!" Rorid hollered again.
The drifter stopped mid-swing. He tilted his head as if listening then slapped Priole on the shoulder.
Priole and the drifter ran toward Rorid. Another tremor shuddered through the bridge. A section fell away between them and Rorid.
"No, no, no!" Rorid wailed.
Priole looked down at the expanse between them, then back up to Rorid.
"Sir!" Priole shouted. "Take care of Ree!"
He stood at attention with the glowing shockspear standing straight at his side. Its crackling light lit his face. In this stance, Priole's arm no longer covered his stomach, and Rorid saw the true extent of his wound. The young guardsman's arm had never been injured. He'd clutched it to his stomach this whole time to keep his entrails inside.
With a purposeful smile, Priole saluted his captain.
Rorid's arm felt as heavy as stone as he lifted it to return the salute.
The bridge section beneath him listed and bucked. Rorid had no choice. He turned and ran, leaving Priole behind.
He stepped on land moments before his half of the bridge crumbled. The structure crashed into the river and splintered on the rocks below.
Rorid walked with his head down in the direction of the logging pavilion. He turned one last time.
Priole and the drifter held their ground on the quaking remains of the bridge. Rorid stood at attention, and tried to salute. Instead, his hand went to his eyes. He fell to his knees and cried.
◊ ◊ ◊
"How's that stomach, kid?" Chuggie patted Priole on the shoulder. "You got guts. I'll give you that."
"Not for long, I don't." The young guardsman fell to his knees, holding himself up with one shaking arm. "I'm done now."
"You fought plenty," Chuggie grunted as he blasted a creature with his anchor.
"Don't… let them take me."
"I'll do what I can, kid." Chuggie wished he could say something a little more reassuring, but he didn't want to make a false promise to a dying man.
"You do it," Priole said with effort.
"Huh?"
"Finish me off and throw me in the river." Priole groaned and pounded a fist on the bridgeboards. "I won't end up like them." He pointed at the desecrated mob.
Chuggie bashed more of the abominations with a swing of his anchor. He sensed them crawling along the bridge's underside. Soon they'd get up behind him. He swore he felt others clawing and gnawing at the bridge supports.
"Do it!" Priole screamed, his voice slurred with agony and sorrow. He stretched out his arms to receive Chuggie's mercy.
Chuggie went numb. As if on its own, his arm shot out and the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu pierced Priole's heart.
Priole's dimming gaze turned in the direction the others had escaped. He saluted. His life left him, and his body thudded to the bridge deck.
As requested, Chuggie heaved the body over the rail.
A flash of lightning crackled through the sky A creature lumbered onto the bridge. It stood nearly eight feet tall, man and scarecrow melded together in mockery of a Steel Jack. Its mindless, grinning face chomped at the air.
"Alright," said Chuggie, "let's do this, big boy."
Chuggie launched his anchor at the thing. Not waiting for it to land, he launched himself at it, too. The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu stabbed through its chest, doing absolutely no damage. He yanked the blade free and unleashed a combination of slashes, stabs, and hacks. He severed its left arm, and still it came. He severed its right arm, and it rammed into him with its head.
Huge teeth snapped at his throat.
Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater Page 29