“That’s so horrible,” she wailed.
“It gets worse,” Ben said miserably. “Pat was still on the phone with her. When it happened. He heard the whole thing.”
Lucy wiped her nose with her sleeve. “My God,” she said, her voice thick with mucus. “What do you do for someone who’s been through that?”
Ben shrugged. “You pack up and follow him to Disney World.”
Just then, Patrick and the thin man reappeared at the top of the hill. Ben cleared his throat and picked himself up. “Not a word about this to Pat, okay?” She nodded.
They stood up as the pair drew near, as did the rest of the thin man’s party. They had huddled near the river, keeping watch over their captives from a few dozen yards away. “Everything okay?” Ben asked. Patrick met them by the boat and slid his recently restored machete into its cardboard scabbard. “Dude. You look pale. -Er. Paler. Than usual. What happened?”
Patrick rubbed a hand over Ben’s bristly scalp and said, “Something extremely odd happened. I’ll fill you in when I figure out what it was.”
The thin man beckoned his crew, and they joined them at the boat. “Return their weapons,” Marimbo said. “He has spoken with Madame Siquo. Violo,” he said, motioning to a short, stringy man with curly hair, “le carburant.” Violo removed his pack and produced from it three small metal canisters. He handed them to Lucy, who took them suspiciously.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Fuel,” said Marimbo.
“For my boat?”
“For you to do as you will,” he responded. “Madame Siquo sees your path. It is not the path of Mouse Hunter. She offers a gift of fuel, so that you may fulfill your destiny.”
Lucy looked at Marimbo, then down at the canisters, then back at Marimbo. “So...I should use it for the boat?”
“You don’t have to—“ Ben started to say, but Patrick stopped him.
“Ben. She shouldn’t come with us.”
“Why not?”
Patrick sighed. “There’s blood on the bones, and the path is broken with peril.”
Ben furrowed his brow. “What the hell are you talking about? Oh my God. Are you high?” He leaned it to check Patrick’s pupils. Patrick swatted him away.
“Like I said. Processing. Just...trust me.”
“Oh my God,” Lucy gushed, “I can go back to New York!”
Ben rubbed fiercely at his temples. “That much fuel is not going to get you to New York,” he said. Christ, was he the only one thinking like a rational person? And why did this woman’s hair smell so much like honey and lilies?
“I say this for the second and, God willing, the last time, but Ben’s right. You won’t get to New York. But it may be able to take you home. You should think about heading back to Hannibal.”
Marimbo raised a hand in farewell. “To each, his path.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Madame Siquo’s rib bones. Patrick hadn’t seen him go anywhere near the pile of bones, yet there one was, curved and clean but for the reddish brown dried blood. He placed it in Patrick’s hand and closed his fingers around it. “Remember your path, Mouse Hunter. Remember your choice.”
7.
“Are we really going to go through Memphis without seeing Graceland?”
“Yes. But keep your chin up. If we get just the right amount of lost, we’ll wander straight into Tupelo.”
“I can’t believe we’re skipping out on Elvis. Look! That sign says ten minutes away!”
“By car, Ben. Ten minutes by car. That’s two and a half hours by foot, which means three hours for us.”
“Why three hours for us?”
“Because I’m lost in thought. I walk much more slowly when I’m lost in thought.”
“Then stop thinking, and let’s race to the King’s house.”
“We’re not going to Graceland,” Patrick insisted. “It’s already nearly noon. If we go to Graceland, it’ll take three hours. Then you’ll want to go in, then you’ll probably sit and cry like a poodle skirt fan girl, then you’ll come up with some stupid scheme to steal a gold record or something, and by the time we get back on the move, it’ll be dark, and we’ll be spending the night in the Memphis metro, which means we probably won’t wake up.” The tinkling sound of breaking glass echoed in the distance, punctuating his point. “If we keep along 78, we’ll be well into Mississippi by the time we set up camp.”
“Oh, like Mississippi’s going to be a safer place to camp. They’re all brigands and thieves in Mississippi, every last one of them.”
“Says who?”
“Says my infallible gut instinct.”
Patrick stopped in the middle of the road and literally put his foot down. “I didn’t want to have to play this card, Fogelvee, but you’re forcing my hand. What was the one rule I gave you about this trip?”
Ben glowered. “If I’d known how awful your decisions would be, I wouldn’t have given you the power to make them.”
“You’ll thank me tomorrow, when we wake up not dead.”
They climbed the ramp onto Highway 78 and continued on southeast, dodging cars when they could, climbing over them when they couldn’t. Patrick slipped the hammer from his belt and absently knocked the hoods of vehicles as he passed. The mindless repetition helped him think. After a mile of sulking, Ben finally gave in and broke the silence. “So who was Madame Sexpo? What’d she say to you to make you all pissy?” Patrick swung the hammer and dented the hood of a Hummer with a satisfying thunk. “Come on,” Ben pressed, “I can help you process. I have a degree in English. I’m practically a human word processor.”
“And to think, I kept you around, even after the tech boom of the mid 90’s,” Patrick said.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” He drove the hammer through the left headlight of the Hummer for good measure. “Okay, fine. Pull up a chair.”
“I’ll take that to mean a metaphorical chair.”
“Whatever’s comfortable.” He described the old woman as accurately as he could, given the darkness of the room where they’d met. Apparently Ben had eaten at Pig once on a previous visit to Memphis and had at least a foggy memory of the restaurant. Patrick told him of the old woman’s dark, weathered skin and her spooky white eyes. He nodded when Ben asked if she was a fortuneteller. “She definitely dabbled in fortunes.”
“Did she have a crystal ball? That’s the telltale sign.”
“No. She had bones.”
“Bones?” Ben asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah, bones. She read bones.” He held up the pig rib Marimbo had given him. “Like reading tea leaves. But, you know. Bones.”
“Human bones?” he asked hopefully.
“Does this look like a human bone?”
Ben frowned. “Yes?” he asked.
Patrick sighed. “It’s pig, I think.”
“Oh.”
“She threw them on the table and did this weird hand waving thing.” Patrick flopped his hands through the air, mimicking the old soothsayer. “Then she told me our path would be fraught with peril.”
“Seriously?”
“Fraught, or maybe broken. Broken with? Does that make sense? No, it must’ve been fraught. Yeah, fraught with peril.”
“Well. That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, it was fairly troubling.”
“Did she say what kind of peril?”
“As a matter of fact, she did.” Patrick closed his eyes and tried to remember the scene. He wanted to repeat the perils accurately. In doing so, he stepped straight into a pothole and stumbled down onto the pavement with a loud curse.
“That looked pretty perilous,” Ben observed. “Did she warn you about that?”
“Shut up. I’m trying to remember it
all.” He stood up and shook out his ankle. They continued down the highway. “Let’s see. There’s the light bringer. The siren. The running man. The demon’s daughter. The mummy. No, wait, not mummy. The mummer? Is that a thing?”
“Of course that’s a thing. I thought you read Game of Thrones. Hold on, I want to write these down.”
“I was wondering when you were going to start chronicling my journey. You’ll need good notes for my biography.”
“I’m not chronicling your journey, you narcissist.” He retrieved a notebook and pencil from his backpack and began scribbling. “Okay, start again. I got the mummer.”
Patrick ticked them off on his fingers. “The mummer, the light bringer, the siren. The running man. The demon’s daughter. What else? I think there were nine. Umm...oh, the butcher! That was one. And Umbro Tom and the hollow man. Was it Umbro? No, that’s not right. Umbros are shorts, not Toms.” He tapped his finger against his chin. “The something Tom and the hollow man. Those two were together. And one more, I think. It was...oh! The fire drinker.”
“The fire drinker?” Ben asked, scribbling. “That sounds badass.” Patrick agreed. Ben read back down over his list. “The mummer, the light bringer, the siren, the running man, the demon’s daughter, the butcher, the something Tom, the hollow man, and the fire drinker. Jesus, this list is intense.”
“It really is,” Patrick said.
“Do you think we met any of these perils yet? Maybe we’re, like, almost done.”
“Sadly, no. I got the very distinct impression that these were perils yet to come. But on the bright side, she told me I’d make it to Disney World, so they can’t be that bad.”
“Mm,” Ben said, studying the list. “So what do all these mean?”
“They mean I’m really bad at solving riddles. Can your brilliantly English-degreed mind make heads or tails of any of it?”
“Yes, obviously.” Ben studied the list as he walked, barely noticing the road. Several times, Patrick had to warn him of obstacles to keep him from injuring himself. He moved his lips silently, trying to make some semblance of sense from the words. Finally, after another half mile, he tapped the notebook with his pencil. “I think I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.
“Really?” Patrick asked.
“No, of course not. It’s all gibberish. Who am I, Robert Langdon? Why did you give me this, take it back.” He shoved the notebook into Patrick’s hands.
“Really? Nothing? Not even the fire drinker?”
“Especially not the fire drinker.”
“Hmm,” thought Patrick. “My money’s on a reverse dragon. Let’s keep an eye out for Renaissance faires.”
•
It was still light out when they reached the Mississippi state line. The state welcome sign still stood next to the highway, though someone had spray painted an X through Mississippi. It now read, Welcome to HELL. “That’s a good sign,” Ben said sarcastically.
“Ha. ‘Good sign.’ Get it?”
“Yeah. I do. ‘Cause I said it.” They crossed over the invisible state line and left Tennessee behind. “Hey, remember that one time when we went to Memphis, probably for the last time ever, since we’re likely to die, and you didn’t let me see Graceland?”
“Yeah. I do. I also remember the time when you complained about it like a little girl for eight days.”
As they crossed over to The Magnolia State, it was immediately apparent why the sign had been adjusted. It wasn’t because Mississippi had been completely blighted by the apocalypse, though it certainly had been. On either side of the highway, the earth was scorched where it had been cleansed with fire. What buildings had once stood were now no more than destroyed foundations and piles of charred wood. The trees that had somehow managed to survive the fire had been stripped of their leaves by the flames, and clumps of yellow dust clung to the hollowed trunks. But they had expected that sort of ruin.
No, what made Mississippi a hell on earth were the human bodies nailed to the tree trunks.
“Oh, dear God,” Patrick breathed, his eyes wide with horror. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
Ben didn’t respond. He was too busy puking in the ditch.
Dozens of rotting, yellow-crusted corpses had been hammered into the charred trees along both the sides of the road. The bodies perched high above the ground like grotesque scarecrows. Each victim’s arms had been broken at the elbow and at the wrist so the hands could be bent back around the curve of the trunk and nailed in from behind. Most of them had been hammered through the feet as well.
“Jesus Christ,” Patrick whispered. “What happened down here?”
Ben shook his head, wiping spittle from his pale lips. “This trip just took a turn.”
They walked on in silence. As the sun fell toward the horizon, the fog took on its pinkish twilight glow. The crucified remains turned a deep, reddish hue through the layers of rosy clouds, like streaks of blood in the brume.
“Maybe we should take a different road,” Ben suggested after almost an hour of silence.
“Might be worth a shot,” Patrick quickly agreed. They’d have to make camp before long, and he didn’t want to sleep beneath a canopy of corpses if he could help it.
They left the highway at the next exit and headed east on what a rusty green sign told them was New Craft Road. The cars were fewer on this lower street, and they covered ground quickly. But the corpses kept pace, ushering them deeper and deeper into the heart of the state.
“Who would do something like this?” Ben asked.
“Anyone on our list fit the bill?”
“For all I know, everyone on our list fits the bill.”
The deepening darkness brought a reprieve from the sight of the bodies hanging from the trees, but it did little to settle their imaginations. Every rustle in the woods was a creeping killer; every gust of wind was the breath of a psychopath with a hammer and a handful of nails. Patrick’s anxiety was so bad that even he, the paragon of rationale that he was, began to see things in the night. A scorched bush was a crouching madman. A low-flying bird was an arrow loosed from a hunter’s bow. A swaying tree was a hulk with a knife. A trick of the moon against the fog was the flare of a bonfire.
“Hey. Is that a bonfire?” Ben whispered. Patrick stared at him, incredulous.
“Are you in my mind?”
“What?”
“Do you really see a bonfire?”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. But I’m imagining it.”
“I don’t think you are.”
The phantom light flickered off to the right, several hundred yards from the road. They glanced at each other. Then Ben took a step off the pavement and began creeping toward the fire.
“Ben!” Patrick hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see what it is.”
“Are you insane?!” he asked, slapping Ben’s arm. “We have to go! Now!”
“It could be another survivor. We should find out.”
“No! We should not find out!” Patrick spat. “You know who lights a huge, completely visible fire in a serial killer’s forest? The serial killer!”
Ben thought about this. Okay, yes, it made sense. But he still wanted to know for sure who was camping in the forest. If it wasn’t the person responsible for the crucifixions, they’d have an ally for the night. And if it was the murderer, well, they’d just run like hell. Or throw a hammer at him or something. “I’m going in. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” He took another step into the woods, then stopped and turned back. “You should probably take out the machete.”
“Ben!” Patrick hissed. “Benjamin Marjorie Fogelvee! Get back here! The rule of the road! The rule of the road!” But Ben was gone, stepping lightly toward the flames in the hazy distance. Patrick cursed
aloud and followed his idiotic friend to their mutual death.
He caught up about 20 yards in. Ben was crouching behind a wide tree, one that was not acting as a support for a pierced body, thank God. Patrick crouched close behind him and slapped him on the back of the head.
“Ow!” he hissed.
“You’re gonna get us killed,” Patrick hissed back. Ben held a finger to his lips to signal for quiet. Together, they peered around the side of the tree. The fog cleared for a moment, and they could see plainly through the night air. An older man in a black shirt and black pants stood near the fire, holding up a small book. He seemed to be speaking adamantly, though they couldn’t make out any of the words. He faced a group of people, maybe 20 or 30 of them, who crossed themselves and folded their hands tightly across their breasts.
“It’s a preacher,” Patrick said, surprised.
“That’s the kind of person who starts a fire in the middle of a serial killer’s forest,” Ben said. “The kind with irrationally strong belief in supreme protection.” He shifted his weight and stepped on a brittle twig. It cracked loudly and echoed around the woods. The man with the book stopped and peered out into the darkness.
“You’ve made your presence known to us,” he called into the darkness in an easy southern drawl. “Be you friend, we welcome you to our fire. Be you foe, the devil will welcome you to his.”
“Shit,” Patrick muttered. “What do we do?”
Ben shrugged. “We could make a run for it.”
“The two of us outrunning God’s army? Dammit, Ben.” He slapped the back of Ben’s head again. “This is precisely why we have the rule of the road.” He drew his machete from its sheath and held it tightly in his right hand. He pulled out the baton, too, and flicked it open with his left. “If we survive the night, I’m killing you in the morning.” He stepped out from behind the tree and approached the fire. Ben took a firm grip on his bat and cut out after his friend. Together, they pushed through the fog, weapons at the ready.
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