by Tim Marquitz
Nina wasn’t sure what to say back to that, so she didn’t say anything.
“You're brave,” Rachel continued. “I wish I would have been that brave when Ma was—”
Nina shushed her. “No, Rachel. None of us could've done anything for your ma. Hell, we tried. And trust me, I ain't no braver than you.” She gave in to her instincts, took Rachel’s hand, and gave it a squeeze. “I'm not brave, but I am pissed. You know what I mean? You gotta push the fear down and find the fight deep inside of you. We all have it. You gotta find yours.”
Rachel nodded, looked at Nina with soulful eyes the color of bluebells. “Ma would say something like someone’s reached their breaking point. Something like that.”
“That's right. The breaking point. That’s where we gotta be now.”
Rachel turned her head away, looked at Jasmine, who stared with a blank, tired expression out the back of the wagon. “What's that thing gonna do when it reaches us?”
Nina shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Nothin’, I hope.”
“Me, too.”
“Find the fight inside, okay? 'Cause I have a feelin’ we're gonna need you directly.”
Rachel bit her lip. Then nodded. “I can. I will.”
“Good.”
“Oh!” Father Mathias slapped his palm lightly against his head, then looked around. His eyes alighted on Nina’s pa.
“What is it, Father?” Pa asked, still looking a bit haggard despite a few hours’ sleep.
As tired as Pa still looked, the priest’s eyes were filled with bloodshot exhaustion. Nonetheless, a smile lit his face. “I think I know what's been giving us away.” He pulled the key to the Taiping Jing from his pocket. “Touch this, Lincoln. Tell me I’m not imaging things.”
Pa did so, then nodded. “It feels awful warm to the touch. Unusually so. Buck?”
Buck reached out and felt it. “Yup. What’s that mean?”
“He's been tracking us through this, I’m sure of it. And it's my fault. I should have bound it from his sight. The thought did not even occur.” Mathias sighed. “I feel a fool.”
“Is there any way you can bind it now?” asked Pa.
“I can, but I'll need a few things.” Then he looked directly at Rachel Buell.
THE PRIEST HAD CALLED HER UNBLOODIED. Still young enough that her innocence would be powerful against Liao Xu's magic. “She’s…pure,” he had said.
Upon request, Rachel removed her bonnet, plucked several long strands of her dirty blonde hair, and handed them over to Mathias. They used the sharp point of Nina’s knife to get three drops of blood from her palm. Rachel didn’t wince when Nina poked her, but she did leave teeth marks in her lower lip.
Everyone in the wagon watched with a range of looks from curious to dubious as Father Mathias rubbed Rachel’s blood with his fingers, covering the bejeweled key in sticky, red smears. Then he bound the item with the strands of her hair, tying them gently in a figure eight pattern—an impressive feat considering the wagon jostling about—all the while mumbling prayers and appeals.
“Now, Rachel, touch it and repeat after me: That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee. Amen.”
Rachel repeated the words, her voice given strength upon uttering the verse. It seemed she was even familiar with the passage, the words flowing so readily from her tongue.
Father Mathias hefted the Taiping Jing key. “There, see. It is entirely invisible to Liao Xu now.” He held it out for them to touch.
Nina touched the object and found it be cool, almost cold, in fact.
Pa patted Mathias on the shoulder. He didn’t say it, but Nina wagered her father wished Mathias had thought of it sooner.
A minute later, everything darkened, and Rachel squeezed in tight between Nina and Jasmine. Thunder rumbled overhead, and raindrops fell on the canvas. Nina crawled to the back of the wagon and squatted next to Cato, his lower lip aquiver. Something strange about seeing a man that big looking so mighty terrified.
Nina followed his gaze. She gaped at the torrent bearing down on them. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as a violent, ruddy mist chased them, so thick they couldn't see more than twenty yards behind. The overpowering scent of copper and wet dirt pressed in on her.
“Blod,” Greta whispered in her native tongue. “Det är blod.”
“Yeah, this ain’t no normal kinda downpour,” Nina said. She focused on the drops of wetness that stained the wagon, her eyes going wide with realization.
It was raining blood.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SOMEONE UP FRONT YELLED “HEYAA!” AND whipped the reins. The wagon picked up speed, hitting ruts and grooves that could flip them at any moment. No one complained.
Nina saw Greta had a case of the shakes.
“Hang on, ya hear?” she said, then knelt next to him, pushing aside a box that had fallen on his feet. She lifted his face, put his arm around her knee. “James.” Nina gave his face a gentle pat, but no response. “James!” this time she smacked him on the cheek and was rewarded with a flutter of his eyelids. He moaned.
“Wake up!” Nina shook him, kissed him, shook him some more, did everything she could to get him moving. After a long minute of trying, Manning jerked awake, his eyes practically spinning before coming to rest on Nina.
“Hey,” he croaked. “That's a fair sight.”
Nina shook her head. That was the perfect thing for him to say, but the timing was a little off.
Manning sat up, looked all around, winced at the rainfall hitting the canvas cover, finally noticing they were running full chisel. “What? What is…” The wagon hit another rut and cut off the rest of his question.
“Best just to see for yourself.” Nina pointed between Cato and Greta, outside the wagon. Manning attempted to move toward the back, but the wagon bounced jarringly, the rear end lifting up and slamming back down. Folks howled as the rear wheels lifted and crashed down a second time, skidding them sideways around a sharp turn. Red Thunder grabbed Manning’s coat arm to keep him from tumbling into Mathias, and the priest reached out to steady him.
“Maybe you should just sit,” the priest offered.
Manning looked pale. “What the deuce is going on?” He ignore the advice and climbed over Jasmine and Rachel while holding his belly, pushed his way between Cato and Greta.
Nina followed and came up alongside him.
“Well, this don’t look good at all,” he said.
“No, sir,” Cato agreed. “It sure don’t.”
Nina noticed something else, too. Something horrific that defied explanation. Wherever the blood rain fell, things squirmed up through the earth; brackish tendrils, critters that looked like birds or rats, devious mongrels waddling after them on stunted, crooked legs. Deer-like creatures pulled themselves free from the mud like foals from the hemorrhaging abdomen of the earth, spindly-legged monstrosities bleating and stumbling on their fledgling legs.
George Daggett came down through the flap, covered in wet crimson. He pushed toward the back of the wagon, muscled in beside Nina, and shouted when he saw what followed them, what grew from the ground. “Holeee-shee-it!” He scrambled off, yelling “Faster!” to the drivers. “Faster, goddammit!”
Thunder clamored above them like a giant breathing against the canvas cover, pealing so loud that Rachel and Cato both covered their ears. A thick shower washed over them, then tapered off again. If some of them could have panicked and ran, they would have, Nina knew by the looks on their horrified faces. But there was nowhere to run.
Cato crawled away, knocked Father Mathias aside, and climbed over crates of food to cower in the corner beside Red Thunder. The Indian looked at the black man with a stoic expression, the only one of them who did not look rattled. He sat calmly, tomahawk in hand, while, next to him, Buck fiddled with his hunting knife. Pa merely looked at her.
Rachel and Jasmine took up the floor where Manning had been laying just a
few minutes ago. The girl held Jasmine's head and stroked her hair nervously as the black woman wept into her lap. Nina turned back and saw the unsure look on Greta’s face, caught somewhere between joining Cato or jumping out the back to certain death.
Mathias clung to a wagon rib, holding on as they lurched again. “This is quite the predicament.”
“Is that what you call something like this, Father?” Nina ground her jaw, her mind working to figure out how they might get out of this.
“More like a catastrophe,” Manning said through clenched teeth, hand still on his stomach wound.
The wagon drove into something thick, as if tearing through a field of tall grass. Nina peered down as the very earth rebelled to stop them. Those snaky tendrils, now four and five feet long, waved like thick, flexible saplings along the road. It was those things grabbing at the wheels, no doubt tripping up the horses.
Nina pulled her knife free. “We'll have to stand and fight soon.”
Manning put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him. “You got any magic left in you?”
“I don't know.” And that was the honest truth. Her boha gande hadn't come to her rescue at Ramdohr’s sawmill, but neither had she tried to summon him or any of the People. Just how would she do it? The whole incident on the train felt like a misty dream lingering at the edges of her waking mind, seeping away.
If magic worked the way Father Mathias described it, then it was unpredictable, about as reliable as dumb luck. All one could do was coax it. There wasn’t any real command. It was all just fucking happenstance.
But, hell, she had nothing to lose for trying. Nina closed her eyes, focused on Manning's arm around her, on the drums and voices of the Shoshone, listened for the thrum beneath all the other sounds, tried to feel it inside as if it had never gone away, had never left her, but only quieted. Nina for courage.
Thrum.
She pictured a spring shower, a welcome rain, washing away the earthen debris, all the detritus of winter. Suddenly, the blood rain didn't seem so terrible, despite the hungry things in it. Any other power she might tap remained latent. No wave of godliness to wash the evil away, no blessed lump of coal to kill this storm.
Yet, she sensed the spirit world awaited.
Thrum.
Their progress slowed. Why?
The wagon finally ground to a halt, wheels seizing. Nina opened her eyes.
There was only the rain, the complaints of the horses, the gagging reek of coppery blood—and those things slithering around out there, those stumbling, bleating beasties.
The Daggetts and Strobridge piled into the wagon from the seat above, soaked in blood rain. Strobridge wiped his hands on his pants. “The horses are caught, and so are the wheels. We've got to go out there and cut ourselves free.” He looked at Cato, cowering in the corner. “What’s wrong with him?”
George regarded everyone from behind a bloodstained mask. “We got maybe ten bullets,” he said, and closed the cylinder on his pistol.
Cato seemed to have roused from his sniveling after having drawn some attention. “I still got my peavey hook.” He grabbed up the hook-spear thing from beneath a crate against the sideboard.
“Greta’s got an ax, Red his tomahawk, we got knives,” Nina said. “But we'll need someone ready to drive soon as we cut loose.”
“That’s me,” Strobridge said. “Let’s not wait around.” He climbed back up into the seat.
The rain had tapered off to a drizzle, a red mist hanging over the road. Whatever beasts stalked them remained just out of view, but their menacing intentions were palpable.
Buck and Red Thunder were the first ones out. “James, you’re still moving slow. You stay with Pa and the girls, okay?”
“You’re going out there?”
“I gotta help.”
Cato was the next one clambering out, saying, “Holy Jesus, protect us.”
Nina leapt out of the wagon before Manning could say anything else, and landed with a splash in a puddle of rust-colored mud. Something swiped at her boot and she kicked it, then swept left. The wagon wheels were indeed wrapped up in the thick, veiny, stems. Some had been torn to pieces, caught up in the spokes and adding to the obstruction. Nina took the front wheel and began clearing the mess, plucking out gruesome slabs of unholy flesh, holding her breath against the stench, and quickly cutting anything that wrapped around her boot.
Cato worked on the rear wheel with his hook, face all twisted up in a grimace of disgust. If they weren't in such a gruesome situation, Nina might have laughed.
“I'm going to try to free up the horses,” she said. “Watch this wheel if any more grow up. And work quick—we ain't got time to pussyfoot around.”
“Yes’m.” Cato nodded, flashed a flummoxed smile, which looked gruesome as hell through the veneer of blood on his dark skin. He hooked away more gray-fleshed creepers as Nina trotted to the front.
The horses weren't in horrible shape, all things considered. More terrified than anything. They sat in the red mud, legs tangled in wormy vines.
“Easy, now,” she told the quaking beast as she worked. Realizing they were being freed, the horses struggled harder against their bonds. One jerked free and stood. George showed up from the other side of the wagon to help her with the others.
He shook his head as he worked, as if constantly snapping out of a daze. The top of his head had gotten a pregnant swell, like a walnut growing just beneath his skin. Couldn't even keep his hat on anymore, and his forehead had taken on a charcoal tone. The man looked two shades from dead.
He chuckled, a sick shake in his voice. “I thought I seen everything...”
“Yeah, I know. You were at Shiloh. But I wasn't, so don't go talkin’ shit about it.”
“I wasn't talkin’ shit. Just sayin', I seen some shit, but nothin' to top this here shit. This is what I'd call royal shit. I’d call this here, I’d call it shit of epic proportions.” George yanked a squeezing tendril away from the horse's neck and sliced it. “Shit, shit, shit, and more fuckin’ shit!”
George bemoaned a lot, about as incessant as anyone she’s ever known, but Nina could understand why he made a good soldier. Steadfast, adept with his hands, wiry, and competent for the most part.
Nina smiled. “I’d call this a four-course meal of shit.”
“I’d call this a wagon chock-full of shit.” He emphasized the last, clearly enjoying the sound of the word.
With both horses up, George called for Strobridge. “Let's go!” The railroad boss flicked the reins, and the horses were more than happy to oblige.
“A platter of shit sandwiches,” Nina said, chuckling.
“You’re disgusting,” George told her from the other side of the horses. “Wait, is that squirrel shit or human shit?”
“Human.” The answer out before she could think about it.
“Yup, you’re disgusting.”
“Squirrel shit ain't?”
“I reckon I’d eat squirrel shit if I had to.”
Nina shook her head, stifling a laugh, as they guided the horses at a good clip through the steady, blood drizzle. The road was far too treacherous to take it any faster, some places having been completely washed away by the deluge. Things wandered in and out of Nina's view, swimming in a mist, which did not want to give up its secrets just yet. Nina fretted. She’d rather Liao just do what he was gonna and get it over with. Tired and mangy with barely a smidgen of firepower, they'd be sitting ducks for him when he decided to make his play. She was sick of waiting.
Like an answered prayer from some god of ill luck, the rain picked up. The slimy tentacles slithered out of the ground in thick clumps, drawing energy from the morbid downpour. Strobridge flicked the reins harder, but it was too late. Thicker this time, the wormy tendrils twined through the spokes and wrapped up the wheels faster than they could be cut.
Cato cried out in frustration as he strained against the fleshy onslaught. Nina went to his aid. Before she could reach him, wood groan
ed and the axle splintered. Nina started to cut the stems but changed her mind and threw her weight against Cato who'd partially slid beneath the wagon. He pulled his legs clear just as a pained groan shook the heavy wooden frame. The wheels shattered inward, and the wagon bed smashed to the ground.
The horses went the same way, pulled over by the weight of the wagon and the insistent tug of the vines. Covered in tentacles, worn out and scared, the poor animals fell to the ground and were pinned. They screamed as their legs snapped like twigs beneath the tentacles' brutal strength. The vines strangled them in the bloody mud, their muted neighs spilling out as moist rattles.
“Christ!” George yelled. He shot one of the horses. “You sonofabitch! Fuck you!”
“Don’t waste your bullets!” Strobridge bellowed.
George ignored him and shot the remaining horse.
“Goddammit!” Strobridge yelled.
“Let’s get inside,” Mason hollered at his brother, his sentence punctuated by thunder.
They all piled in, clambering over one another in a not-so-orderly fashion, knocking aside what was left of the supply boxes in their haste. The ground quaked, the wagon bed shook, and a tendril shot up through the wood. It swiped at George amidst a spray of jagged splinters. The Reb threw his hands over his head, screaming into his shirt. “They're gonna tear the wagon to pieces. I'd rather be taken by a blasted Yank than one of these...things. What the fuck are we gonna do?”
Rachel grabbed a tin can from a spilled crate and hurled it at the tendril, then cried out in surprise as something wrapped around her ankle. Manning reached to help her, while Jasmine sat quietly in the middle, staring out the back of the wagon with dark tears streaming down her dark cheeks.
Nina couldn’t get to Rachel. She twisted back and forth, knife in hand as more things wiggled up through the floor—there was little she could do. Soon they'd be pulled to the ground just like those horses, torn to pieces and dragged off, buried, gone like they'd never been born.
Mathias leapt up, a determined look on his face. “God willing, none of you will be taken today.” The priest clutched a wiggling tendril in each hand and shouted in a voice given volume by his conviction. “I will tell you about the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants’ things which must shortly come to pass.” The things squealed in Mathias's hands, grayish skin turning ashen; yet, they wrapped around Mathias's wrists and sought to pull him down. “I am Alpha and Omega,” Mathias shouted, “the beginning and end, sayeth the Lord, who is, was, and will always be, the Almighty.”