Pines

by Crouch, Blake

  Twenty feet below: bedlam.

  The buildings and storefronts glowed and darkened under the ceaseless exchange of firelight and shadow, the source of it all a giant bonfire raging in the middle of the street in spite of the rain, fueled with pine saplings and long strips of siding ripped from houses. Two men carried a wooden bench toward the blaze, Ethan watching as they heaved it onto the pyre to the great delight of the rain-drenched masses who packed the block, the concentration of bodies increasing with proximity to the flames.

  The people below looked nothing like the residents he’d encountered prior to this moment.

  Most had outfitted themselves in extravagant costumes.

  Fake, gaudy jewelry dripped from the wrists and necks of women. Beaded necklaces and pearls and tiaras. Their faces were a-sparkle with glitter and heavily made-up, eyes popping with eyeliner, and all scantily clad despite the cold and the rain, like a throng of reveling prostitutes.

  The men looked equally absurd.

  One wore a sports coat and no pants.

  Another, dark slacks and red suspenders and no shirt with a Santa Claus hat perched atop his head. He pointed a baseball bat to the sky, the weapon stark white and covered with grotesque drawings of monsters that Ethan could barely see from his vantage point.

  Standing on a brick planter, head and shoulders above the crowd, an immense figure caught his notice. The monstrous man was dressed in the fur of a brown bear—still pinned with his brass star—and he wore some sort of metal headpiece mounted with antlers, his face streaked with lurid war paint, a shotgun slung over one shoulder, a sheathed sword hanging off the other.

  Pope.

  The man surveyed the crowd like it was something he owned, the liquid pools of his eyes reflecting the bonfire like a pair of stars.

  All he had to do was look up across the street, and in the wealth of firelight, he couldn’t fail to miss Ethan peeking down from the third-floor apartment.

  He knew he should leave, but Ethan couldn’t turn away.

  A segment of the crowd beyond Ethan’s line of sight erupted in shouts that caught Pope’s attention, a big smile expanding across the lawman’s face.

  From an inner pocket in his bearskin coat, Pope took a clear, unlabeled bottle containing some brown liquid, raised it toward the sky, and said something that ignited the crowd into a frenzy of fist-pumping cheers.

  While Pope took a long pull from his bottle, the crowd began to part, a corridor forming down the middle of Main Street, everyone straining to see.

  Three figures appeared, moving through the crowd toward the bonfire.

  The outer two—men dressed in dark clothes with machetes dangling from shoulder straps—held the person in the middle by her arms.

  Beverly.

  Ethan felt something dislodge inside him, a molten core of rage metastasizing in the pit of his stomach.

  He could see that she didn’t have the strength to stand, her feet sliding across the pavement as her captors dragged her along. One of her eyes was closed from what must have been a savage blow, and what he could see of her face was covered in blood.

  But she was conscious.

  Conscious and terrified, her gaze fixed on the wet pavement under her feet like she was attempting to shut out everything else.

  The two men toted her to within ten yards of the bonfire and then pushed her forward, releasing her.

  Pope shouted something as Beverly crumpled to the ground.

  The people in her immediate vicinity pressed back, forming a circle of open space around her, twenty feet in diameter.

  Through the window, Ethan heard Beverly crying.

  She sounded like a wounded animal—something so desperate in her high-pitched keening.

  Everywhere, people were elbowing their way through the crowd, trying to reach the outskirts of the circle, the cluster of bodies forming the perimeter becoming tighter and tighter.

  Pope tucked the bottle back into his coat and took hold of his shotgun.

  He pumped it, aimed it at the sky.

  The report echoed between the buildings, rattling the glass in the window frame.

  The crowd fell silent.

  No one moved.

  Ethan could hear the rainfall again.

  Beverly struggled to her feet and wiped away a line of blood running down the middle of her face. Even from this third-floor window, Ethan couldn’t miss the quaking that had enveloped her, the all-encompassing fear that consumes a person who knows exactly what horrible thing they’re about to experience.

  Beverly stood teetering in the rain, favoring her left foot.

  She turned slowly, hobbling, taking in the surrounding faces, and though Ethan couldn’t hear her words, the tone of her voice was unmissable.

  Imploring.

  Desperation.

  Rain and tears and blood streaming down her face.

  A full minute elapsed.

  Someone shouldered his way through the mass of people and broke out into the circle.

  Cheers erupted.

  Wild applause.

  It was the shirtless man with red suspenders and a Santa hat.

  At first, he lingered on the edge as if steeling himself—a boxer in his corner, moments before the bell.

  Someone handed him a bottle.

  He tilted it back, took a long, reckless swig.

  Then he gripped his painted bat and stumbled out into the circle.

  Toward Beverly.

  He circled her.

  She backed away, veering close to the edge of the crowd.

  Someone gave her a hard shove out into the middle of the circle, the momentum propelling her straight at the man with the bat.

  Ethan didn’t see it coming.

  Neither did Beverly.

  Happened fast, as if the man decided at the last possible second.

  A single, fluid motion.

  Raised the bat and swung.

  The sound of maple striking skull made Ethan instinctively shut his eyes and turn away.

  The crowd roared.

  When he opened them again, Beverly was on the ground, struggling to crawl.

  Ethan felt a surge of bile threatening to surface.

  The man in the Santa hat dropped the bat on the pavement and strutted off into the crowd.

  The bat rolled across the road toward Beverly.

  She reached for it, her fingers inches away.

  A woman wearing a black bikini, black heels, a black crown, and black angel wings stepped into the circle.

  She preened.

  The crowd cheered.

  The woman strolled across to where Beverly lay straining for the bat.

  She squatted down, flashed Beverly a bright, toothy smile, and lifted the weapon, gripping it in both hands and raising it above her head like the battle-ax of some demon queen.

  No, no, no, no, no...

  She smashed it into the dead center of Beverly’s back.

  Screams of joy filled the street as Beverly writhed on the ground.

  What he’d have given to be hovering in a Black Hawk two hundred feet above Main in control of a GAU-19 Gatling, burning two thousand rounds per minute into the crowd, cutting these motherfuckers in half.

  Ethan turned away from the window, lifted the coffee table with both hands, and slammed it into the wall, wood splintering, glass shattering.

  The effort only whetted his rage.

  He craved violence, a small voice inside him suggesting he go down there into the crowd with the machete right now and hack away. Yes, they would eventually overpower him, but God there was nothing he wanted more than to go slashing through the masses, a one-man massacre.

  But then you’ll die.

  Never see your family again.

  Never know what any of this was all about.

  Ethan returned to the window.

  Beverly lay unmoving on the street, a lake of blood widening around her head.

  The circle was breaking down and closing in.

 
; Then all at once, the mob descended upon her.

  It was a betrayal to leave, but he couldn’t bear to stand there and watch, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it—five hundred people versus one.

  There’s nothing you can do for her. She’s gone. Now go while you still can.

  As Ethan stormed back toward the door, he heard Beverly cry out, the sound of her pain, her utter hopelessness, bringing tears to his eyes.

  Calm down.

  There could be people outside this door waiting for you.

  Must be vigilant.

  Ethan stepped out into the hallway.

  Empty.

  He shut the apartment door.

  The commotion on Main became an indistinct murmur.

  He wiped his eyes and headed back the way he’d come, up the hallway and then through the door to the stairwell.

  On the third-floor landing, he hesitated, listening, staring down through the railing.

  No sound.

  No movement.

  Eerily still.

  He descended.

  At the bottom, he cracked open the door just wide enough so he could squeeze through.

  A sliver of light escaped into the alley.

  Ethan stepped down into a puddle and closed the door.

  It rained harder than before.

  For thirty seconds, he didn’t move, waiting for his eyes to readjust to the darkness.

  Then, pulling the hood over his head, he moved south, up the middle of the alley.

  In the distance, rain poured through the spherical illumination of a streetlamp, but otherwise, the darkness between the buildings was so complete Ethan couldn’t see his feet beneath him.

  The crowd exploded with its loudest roar yet.

  He thought of Beverly, had to stop himself from imagining what was happening to her, his grip tightening around the machete, molars grinding together.

  Footsteps up ahead brought Ethan to a sudden halt.

  He stood thirty feet back from where the alley intersected the next street, confident of his invisibility in the shadows.

  A man in a dark slicker walked into view, heading west from Main.

  He stopped under the streetlamp and stared into the alley.

  He held a hatchet and a flashlight.

  Ethan could hear the rain pattering on his jacket.

  The man crossed the street and came into the alley.

  Turned his flashlight on, shined the light at Ethan.

  “Who’s there?”

  Ethan could see his own breath steaming in the cold.

  “It’s me,” Ethan said, starting toward him. “Have you seen him?”

  “Me who?”

  The light was still in Ethan’s face, and he hoped the man could see him smiling, hoped he grasped the madness that was coming his way.

  The man’s eyes went wide as Ethan drew close enough for him to see bruises and blood streaks and stitches and the general ruin of his face, but his reaction—cocking the hatchet back for a strike—came a half second late.

  Ethan swung the blade parallel to the ground with a single-handed grip that generated enough force to split him open across the middle.

  The man’s legs buckled, his knees hit the ground, and Ethan finished him with three devastating slashes.

  He began to run, buzzing with the rush of the kill like he’d done a hit of speed.

  Ethan streaked out of the alley and across Seventh.

  Right—a half dozen points of light two blocks down moving up the street toward the center of town.

  Left—fifty or more people flooding around the corner from Main, flashlights winking on as they encountered the darkness of the side street.

  Ethan accelerated, blasting into the next alley, no lights ahead, but over his own panting, he could hear multiple footsteps falling in behind his.

  He glanced back—a wall of light thundering down the alley.

  People shouting.

  Up ahead, Eighth Street fast approaching.

  He needed a course change, was already calculating the possibilities, but he couldn’t pull the trigger until he saw what lay ahead.

  Ethan exploded onto Eighth.

  Left—no one.

  Right—a single light two blocks away.

  Ethan veered right, moving at a dead run as he angled across the street.

  Leaped over the curb and hit the opposite sidewalk, nearly tripping over a raised lip of concrete, but he somehow managed to stay afoot.

  Twenty yards carried him to the next block west of Main, and he looked back two seconds before he made the turn, saw the first group of lights emerging out of the alley.

  If he was lucky, they hadn’t seen him.

  He ripped around the corner.

  Blessed darkness.

  Kept to the sidewalk, hauling ass under the pitch-black shade of the pines.

  The next street stood empty as well, and a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed only a handful of pursuing lights, still a good twenty seconds back if he had to guess.

  Ethan dropped another block west and then barreled south.

  The street terminated.

  He’d come to the edge of town.

  Stopped in the middle of the road, bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for air.

  People were coming, both behind him and now from the west.

  Figured he could run two blocks uphill back to Main, but that seemed unwise.

  Get moving. You’re squandering your cushion of distance.

  Straight on, a Victorian mansion backed up against the surrounding forest.

  Yes.

  His legs burned as he pushed on, crossing the street, bolting alongside the house.

  Three strides before he reached the pines, the voice of a child shouted, “He’s going into the woods!”

  Ethan looked back.

  Twenty or thirty people swung around the corner of the mansion, flashlights blazing, running toward him as one, and for a moment, Ethan wondered why their proportions seemed all wrong.

  Legs too short, heads too big, lights held much closer to the ground.

  Children.

  It’s because they’re all children.

  He rushed into the trees, gulping air perfumed with the bittersweet fragrance of wet pine.

  It had been hard enough to see in town, but inside the forest, it was impossible.

  He had to flick on the flashlight, let its wobbly beam steer him between trees, over rotten logs, saplings and low-hanging branches whipping at his face.

  The children entered the wood on his heels, footsteps crushing wet leaves, snapping fallen branches. He had a vague idea of where the river might be, thinking if he kept moving right, he couldn’t miss it, but already he felt disoriented, his sense of direction unraveling like a poorly tied knot.

  A girl screamed, “I see him!”

  Ethan glanced back, just a quick turn of the head, but his timing couldn’t have been worse—he crossed through a patch of deadfall, his feet entangling in a mass of twisted branches and roots that slammed him to the ground, stripping the flashlight and machete from his hands.

  Footsteps all around him.

  Approaching from every side.

  Ethan struggling to pick himself up, but a vine had ensnared his right ankle, and it took him five seconds to rip free.

  The flashlight had gone dark when he’d fallen, and he couldn’t see it or the machete or anything. He ran his hands across the ground, desperate to find them, but all he grasped were roots and vines.

  He clambered to his feet, blindly fighting his way through the deadfall as the lights and the voices closed in.

  Without a flashlight, he was hamstrung.

  Reduced to jogging with hands outstretched—his only defense against plowing into a tree.

  Frantic beams of light crisscrossed in front of him, giving fleeting glimpses of the terrain ahead—a pine forest choking to death on underbrush, long overdue for a cleansing fire.

  Children’s
laughter—carefree, giddy, maniacal—filled the woods.

  A nightmare version of some game from his youth.

  Ethan stumbled out into what he figured for a field or meadow—not that he could see a damn thing, but the rain now hammered him with greater intensity, as if he were no longer protected under the forest’s umbrella.

  Up ahead, he thought he heard the rush of the river, but then lost it to the sound of hard breathing coming up behind him.

  Something crashed into his back—not a particularly jarring blow, but enough to unbalance him for the next.

  And the next...

  And the next...

  And the next...

  And the next and then Ethan hit the ground, face jammed in mud, everything drowned out by the laughter of the children, a full-body assault coming from every side, every angle—superficial punches that didn’t stand a chance of hurting him, the sting of shallow cuts, the occasional and far more disconcerting heft of blunt objects striking his head, and all of it, with every passing second, increasing in frequency, like he was being attacked by a school of piranhas.

  Something stabbed into his side.

  He cried out.

  They mocked him.

  Another stab—oceanic pain.

  His face flushed with rage, and he jerked his left arm out of someone’s grasp, and then his right.

  Got his palms on the ground.

  Pushed himself up.

  Something hard—a rock or a log—thudded into the back of his head hard enough to jog his fillings.

  His arms gave out.

  Face-first back in the mud.

  More laughter.

  Someone said, “Hit him in the head!”

  But he pushed up again, screaming this time, and it must have taken the children by surprise, because for a split second the blows stopped coming.

  It was all the time he needed.

  Ethan got his feet underneath him and forced himself up, took a swing at the first face he saw—a tall boy of twelve or thirteen—and knocked him out cold.

  “Get back,” he seethed.

  There was enough light that for the first time he could actually see what he was dealing with—two dozen children from seven to fifteen years of age encircled him, most holding flashlights and a variety of makeshift weapons—sticks, rocks, steak knives, one with a broom handle with the mop end broken off leaving a jagged splinter of wood.

  They looked as if they’d dressed up for Halloween—a ragtag assembly of homemade costumes pieced together from their parents’ wardrobes.