The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  The halo of light from the flashlight swept the room. The carpeted floor of the den was covered with huddled Black-Eyed Kids, apparently slumbering. There were dozens of them, lying on top of one another, as if they had simply fallen there. More were crowded, sitting in a row, on the tacky plastic-covered old sofa, their hoodie-covered heads bowed like monks in prayer.

  Her breathing caught a little and she quickly swept the kitchen door. More BEKs, at least a dozen more, slumbering everywhere—on the kitchen counters, on the floor, like a nest of rats.

  Lovina used the wall at her back as a guide to slide farther, hoping she would find the basement door just around the corner. She holstered her Glock and reached back, slowly, carefully with her hand, half expecting to feel vise-strong hands grab her wrist and then the agonizing bite. She felt a cool, smooth doorknob. It turned easily. She swept the flashlight back into the den. In the pale wash of the light, the BEKs on the couch all raised their heads as one and regarded her with Stygian eyes.

  “Shit!” Lovina had time to say as she went for her slung AR-15. In the bouncing circle of light, the universe had become a jerky, time-stop movement—angry, screeching, pale cherubic faces with maws of razor-sharp fangs, all moving at blinding, strobe-light speed, all launching straight toward her.

  * * *

  As night fell, the celebration at Buddy’s quieted. The realization of what would likely be coming for them made everyone still and awkward with fear. They had defied the Master of the Hunt, and now his inhuman servants would come to do what his human hounds could not.

  Those who could fight got ready to, armed with the gear that the trucker, Aussapile, and his allies had brought into Four Houses. Those who could not prepared to run ammo, treat the injured, or comfort and calm the infirm and the children.

  “Where did my blasted pistol get to?” Dennis Cottington asked Barb as she pulled his blankets up closer to his chin. “I do believe that I gave it to that girl Julia,” he said.

  Barb nodded and smiled her “everything is going to be okay” smile. “We’ll find it,” she said. “You rest, Dennis. I have to go, but I’ll be back to check on you.”

  “Tell Aggie I love her, and I’m sorry I got shot and can’t help her,” Dennis said, his eyes slightly damp, the tears hovering at the borders. “Not that she needs my help. Tell my beautiful girl to give the Jerries what for, for me, yes?”

  Barb laughed and put something in Dennis’s hand. “You see any Nazis you shoot them, okay?”

  “Very good, Brigadier,” Dennis said, and saluted her.

  There were about forty men and women ready to defend the roadhouse. Barb joined them, next to Carl. “Everyone is tucked in and has defenders,” she said. “We moved all the emergency lights and generators in there in case they decide to cut the power. How we’ve had power at all in this town all these years, anyway, is a mystery to me.”

  “Good,” Carl said, and kissed her. “Okay, everyone. We’ve planned this out and we know what to do when that plan goes to hell, right?” The assembled group muttered agreement, nodded.

  Steve Franco, the retired schoolteacher who had been stranded in Four Houses with his wife and kids for a little over a year, spoke up. “Carl, you think these things will really work?” he asked. “If not, this is going to be … well, a massacre.” He lowered his voice at the last, glancing in the direction of his boys. His wife, Ann, stood beside him, ready to fight.

  Carl nodded. “You’re right, but from what we’ve found out today there’s a massacre coming all across the world in less than an hour. There are good people out there right now trying to stop it, maybe dying to stop it. Here, right now, this is our battle in that war. We’re going to keep our people alive and safe, and we’re going to destroy as many of the enemy as we can. This is our only chance of doing that, Steve, the only chance we’ve had in a long time. I say it’s worth the risk.”

  The temperature inside the bar dropped. Something in the silence of the vacant corners shifted, flowed. The shadow people began to appear everywhere, dozens of them, dozens upon dozens, stretching out of each sliver of darkness, grasping toward the terrified living, huddling against the light.

  “This is it!” Carl shouted. “Keep them away from the kids and the seniors!” He turned to Barb and saw all he needed to see in her eyes. They kissed. It was just like the first kiss. Carl turned, holding his wife’s hand, as Barb moved to cover his back. “Make the bastards pay for every one of us!”

  The shadows fell, enough to devour even the memory of light.

  * * *

  Agent Cecil Dann felt the interminable discomfort of not having a plan, not having an idea how to solve the puzzle—hell, of not having all the pieces he needed to know what the damn puzzle even looked like. This was how he felt every damn time he heard the name Jimmie Aussapile. He checked his phone for the millionth time. No call back from the Justice Department’s attorney. No call back from Aussapile or any of his freaky friends, no one hijacking his cell phone, nothing. He paced back and forth in the greenroom—the guest lounge in the studio of George Norse’s TV show, “Paranormal America Live.” The studio audience was being warmed up by a series of video interviews Norse had done previously on the show and on his international radio program. Dann could watch all that on one of the large monitors in the lounge. On another monitor, he saw the promo for the show for the third time in the past hour. The network was pushing this broadcast and promoting the hell out of the fact that an infamous serial killer had made contact with the show.

  Dann checked his phone again. He was hoping the Department of Justice’s lawyer would give him the go-ahead to pull the plug on the show and confiscate the original tape, but Norse’s network attorneys had been screaming about First Amendment rights, and the weasel from Justice was ducking for cover. He wished he knew exactly what was going on, but his gut told him it was a bad idea to do what a murdering psychopath wanted you to do, and this was exactly what the Pagan wanted to happen.

  Dann looked at the clock on the wall: nineteen minutes until air time. “Typical,” he said. “The one time I want you to butt in you’re nowhere to be seen.”

  * * *

  Ava dropped down into the basement of the house of the Maiden. She swept the flashlight around. The basement was empty—no monsters waiting to gobble her up, no BEK chrysalises or bloodthirsty shadows. The door that she and Agnes had escaped through swayed open in the night breeze. She had taken her time approaching the mansion, waiting until the attack on Buddy’s had begun, then moving painfully slow, inches at a time, through the high grass. A pack of Black-Eyed Children had waited languidly near the entrance to the Maiden’s home.

  With only a few minutes remaining until eight, the pack had suddenly frozen for a moment and then sprinted off in the direction of the house of the Mother. It looked as if Lovina was in and keeping them busy, just as they had planned. That was good. Ava was no badass, like the Louisiana cop or even Agnes. She was a college student and a coward, she knew, regardless of Dennis’s gun on her hip. Once the BEKs were gone, Ava moved quickly inside and made her way to the basement.

  She moved to the capstone of the well. She carefully removed the skeleton. Some of the bones clattered, falling apart as she lifted them. She shuddered and laid the other bones down as gingerly as she could. “Sorry,” she whispered. She took out the small pry bar and looked around the stone for a weak point to begin. She found as good a spot as any and began to work on the crumbling stone. After a few moments, a small chunk cracked and came loose. Ava pulled it free and tossed it aside. A shaft of painfully white light hissed from the opening, like what Agnes had shown Ava in her basement. Ava reached toward the light and felt a force pushing her hand away. A crashing flood of images and memories swarmed her mind. Other voices, other lives. She looked at the bones on the floor and knew her name. Ava struggled to pry more of the stone loose, and more light erupted. The whole basement began to fill with the harsh light. The pre-set alarm on Ava’s cell phone began to
chirp. It was the end of the countdown; they were out of time. The TV show was starting. Ava thought of her dad, her brother, even of her aloof mom watching, being devoured by some faceless, timeless thing.

  A group of shadow people appeared at the open basement door, trying to slide inside. The light obliterated them. A swarm of BEKs dropped into the basement from the ruined stairs, and the light reduced them to smoke instantly. Ava kept tearing the stone away, prying it loose and smashing more, frantically, as the creatures continued to try to reach her. Each crumbling bit of stone freed more and more light.

  She began to feel the presence behind the memories and the images; it was relentless, swelling up in her head like a cluster migraine. The pressure made her feel as if her skull was going to crack and fall apart like the crumbling capstone. As the pressure behind her eyes grew stronger, Ava had an awful thought: The force at the bottom of her well was powerful, primal, and it would stop at nothing to be free. She struck the capstone again, and another chunk of the stone shattered and fell away, devoured by the light. What if, she thought through the storm of alien memories and squeezing pain, the inhuman forces that they were trying to free tonight were no better, no less ruthless or relentless or destructive, than the Horned Man? Her hands were smashing stone of their own accord now. The light was pouring forth, shining through every window, every crack and crevice in the old house, filling the night with its awful, remorseless beauty, and filling Ava with the ghosts of other lives, an unrelenting fear, and an alien purpose.

  * * *

  The semi pulled up in front of Agnes’s house, the house of the Crone. Off to the left, there was a rumble and a brilliant rising ball of orange fire and trailing black smoke.

  “That would be Heck,” Jimmie said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the explosion. “Subtle, our kilted ninja.” Jimmie helped Agnes down out of the cab. He noted that the countdown clock in the truck said time was almost up—it was fifteen minutes until eight o’clock.

  Jimmie helped Max down next. The professor had her face in her tablet and was working furiously, even as she climbed down. “Jimmie, I’m not sure I can do this,” she said, shaking her head at the numbers. “Viamancy works off motion and spatial formulas, and the power coming off the Road. I don’t have any of that here. I don’t know if we can get a message out to Agent Dann. I’m sorry.”

  They were walking up the stairs to the porch. Jimmie had his shotgun and was sweeping the darkness. The porch light they had left on seemed feeble, but he was thankful for any cover from the shadow people he knew were out there. “You’re sorry for not pulling another miracle out of your hat, Max? It’s okay. We’ll figure something out. Always another option, always a way out.”

  Max looked at him strangely.

  “What?” he said, as Agnes opened the front door.

  “When you say all that, it sounds plausible,” Max said. “Like we actually have a chance.”

  “We do,” Jimmie said. “I’ve been in a lot worse scrapes than this, and I’m still standing. You just got to stay positive.”

  Agnes gasped as the front door swung open; a pair of BEKs snarled and launched themselves at the old woman, tackling her before she even had a chance to draw her Mauser. Jimmie fired the shotgun through the open door, scattering part of the horde of ink-eyed, fanged children that were hurtling toward them. He chambered another round and fired again, as more of the fast-moving little monsters filled the breach he had just made. He glanced down for a second at Agnes. She was wrestling the two children with great ferocity, more than Jimmie would have figured her capable of. One of the children tried to bite her left arm, but Agnes pushed the frightfully strong creature away. That left an opening for the other BEK, who sank its razor-sharp teeth into her right hand. Agnes moaned a little and dropped her Mauser in pain from the savage bite. Black tendrils began to creep across her hand, radiating from the bite.

  “No!” Jimmie screamed, and lowered the shotgun against the BEK’s head. The gun’s blast was thunder; the BEK’s head exploded in a bloody smoking mass. Several BEKs from the swarm in the hallway used the momentary distraction to pounce on the trucker, and now Jimmie had three of the strong, fast-moving creatures on him, their teeth snapping like piranha.

  “Jimmie!” Max shouted behind him, as he struggled to keep the teeth at bay. He looked back to see Max backing away from the stairs. The night was roiling with shadow people. They were on the truck, all over the yard, everywhere—hundreds of them. The slight sound they gave made Jimmie think of a swarm of bats, their leathery wings whispering as one. Agitated, the shadow people were throwing themselves against the flickering porch light, smoking and unraveling in a mad effort to reach their human prey, slowly forcing themselves farther up the stairs, farther into the painful but dying light.

  Jimmie struggled to bring the shotgun up, but small, too-strong hands were pinning his arms. Teeth clattered very near his ear, the sound of snapping bone.

  The porch light made a sizzling sound and began to fade, then it came back up, but the shadows were closer now to Max, who was fumbling with her satchel. The light faded again, worse this time and a second longer. The shadow people were closer.

  Jimmie thought of Layla and of Peyton, of his unborn child. The weight of failing them was greater than the monsters pinning him to the porch, preparing to tear into his flesh.

  The light failed.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “10-33”

  The shadow people were the night—they were everywhere, slipping through every narrow crack in Buddy’s, surging toward the helpless, fragile humans who huddled together in fear and a primal instinct to cling to one another when death was nigh.

  “Light ’em up!” Carl shouted, as he, Barb, and the other defenders brandished the small souvenir laser-pointer key chains that Jimmie and the others had delivered that afternoon. The red beams sliced through the shadows like knives and made the creatures melt into odorless smoke in their wake.

  A shadow’s long, slender fingers had begun to slide toward the face of a screaming, terrified six-year-old when it was struck by a crimson beam. The shadow flailed, as if in silent pain, and boiled away into smoke. Dennis Cottington, sitting up in his cot, nodded and gave the confused child a “V for Victory” sign with the hand not holding the laser pointer. The child smiled at the old man.

  “Bloody Jerries,” Dennis said.

  “Now, Christina!” Barb shouted to Christina Moric, one of the defenders behind the bar. Christina flipped a switch on an independent power supply running to multiple power cables, and the whole interior of Buddy’s was illuminated with powerful carbon arc light from a series of tripod-mounted klieg lights—the lights used in television and film production—another part of the arsenal Aussapile and his allies had brought with them. The lights made the interior of Buddy’s as bright as daylight. The shadows began to come apart, smoking, almost diluting, like too little ink in too much water. In a matter of several chaotic, terrifying moments, it was over. Barb looked around the roadhouse. It was still, and no shadow remained. She looked over at Carl and smiled. His eyes narrowed, waiting for the next wave of monsters, but it didn’t come. They hugged each other and listened to the tiny scary noises the thwarted shadows made, out in the night. They worried for Aussapile and the others, out there with no daylight to protect them.

  * * *

  Heck opened his eyes. He hurt. His side throbbed, as though someone had driven a few cigarettes into his flesh with a sledgehammer. He took a breath and felt the sharp stab of a broken rib. He’d wiped out enough times on a bike to know how that felt. He tasted some dried blood on his lips and realized that his face mask was gone. A shitty AM radio somewhere was playing Hank Williams’s “Lost Highway” through a curtain of static rain. His wrists were wrapped in nylon clothesline, and he was hanging a few inches off the ground; the line binding his wrists was cradled in a mechanical winch hook. Wald and Toby Scode were in front of him. Toby was preparing a battered acetylene tank and a torch rig,
while Wald watched Heck with his arms crossed and a shit-eating grin on his craggy face.

  “I wouldn’t smile too much with a mug like that, man,” Heck croaked. “Someone might mistake it for your bum and try to wipe it.” Wald’s smile fell, and he drove a powerful right hook into Heck’s face. There was a flash of white light behind Heck’s eyes and then numbness. He was pretty sure Wald had broken his nose, also not a new experience for Heck. “Oh, oh, wait,” Heck said, sucking a glob of blood up out of his crushed sinuses. The pain that caused chased the numbness away and confirmed the status of his nose. He spit the blood on Wald’s work shirt. “Have we started? Okay, the safe word is … umm…” Heck looked the Scodes up and down. “Inbred?” Wald punched him again. “You sure got a purty mouth? Banjo music? Children of the Corn? Any of these working for you two scholars?”