Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  A growl rippled out of the blackness. Cold, furious, infused with a silvery note of menace.

  “Go,” Micah said.

  They ran. They left everything. Ebenezer’s rifle, Micah’s second Tokarev, the food. The trail scaled up into the hillsides. It was darker under the trees. The beams of their flashlights—Minerva and Ellen were both carrying one—skipped over the earth, over roots cresting from the soil like fingers. They tripped and stumbled and kept motoring.

  Crash and thunder from behind. Micah had hoped the creatures would have been satisfied ransacking the tents. No dice. They were giving chase. Goddamn it all.

  Micah whistled sharply. The others turned to him. He slung his pack off.

  “Give me some light!”

  Ellen trained the flashlight on his pack as he rummaged through it. They were in there somewhere, he knew it. Three waxy cylinders. He had bought them back at the camping store. An impulse buy.

  The things were scrambling up the incline toward them. There was nothing stealthy about their pursuit—he could hear them snapping tree limbs and scraping against their trunks. The sound was enormous, out of scale with any animal Micah had ever known. It was as if a blue whale had grown legs and started blundering after them.

  They were closing in. Sixty yards, now fifty, now forty—

  Ebenezer flanked behind Micah. He squeezed off four shots. The muzzle flash lit the trees, illuminating the shocked face of an owl perched on a low branch. He pulled the trigger again and got only a dry click.

  “Give me another magazine,” he said to Minerva.

  “I’ve only got the one.”

  The things kept coming. If the slugs had hit, they had done nothing to deter them. The sounds intensified—eager squeals like a hog snuffling for truffles.

  “Better me than you.” Eb spoke with an eerie calm. “The clip. Now.”

  Tight-jawed, Minerva handed it over. Micah was still rooting through his pack.

  “Jesus, man,” Ebenezer said, tugging Micah’s arm.

  Thirty yards, twenty—

  Micah couldn’t find them. They started to run again, putting distance between themselves and their relentless pursuers. They hit a straight stretch. The trees opened up. The moon shone against the clouds to provide a weak welter of light.

  Minerva spun, waiting for Ebenezer and Micah to ramble past before she unloaded her Colt. Bullets ripped into the darkness. There was no way a few of her slugs couldn’t have hit their mark—providing the things were using the path, which they might not be.

  For a drawn-out moment, silence. The softer sounds of night enveloped them.

  Then the thud of pursuit amped up again. Harder now, more intense. The night bristled with screeches and yowls and hisses.

  What in Christ’s name are these things? thought Micah.

  They ran hard, their lungs shuddering. Ellen tripped and fell, skidding a few feet across the dirt. Her chin was cut, blood cascading down her neck. But she got up and ran on pure adrenaline. The path dipped through a dry creek bed. Micah slung off his pack. He tore stuff out, clothes and other vital supplies, not caring anymore. How would he eat with his jaw torn off? What use were socks when his feet had been gnawed to the bone?

  “Shug!” Minerva called out.

  He ignored her. The beasts were closing in. Blood-hungry bastards.

  They will be in for a rare fucking disappointment if they catch up and sink their teeth in, he thought. They will find our kind to be stringy, all tendon and cartilage. Not good eating, are human beings.

  His hand closed on what he’d been searching for. He pulled out an emergency flare and tore the strip. Bright red phosphorus fanned from its tip. He tossed it into the creek bed. He scampered up the other side and thumbed the safety off his pistol.

  “Go,” he told the others. “I will meet you directly.”

  They obeyed him, scampering farther up the trail. Micah stood rooted. He had to see what he was dealing with.

  They came. There were two of them, Micah was almost certain. The sounds of their chase indicated they were coming from both left and right: a scissoring maneuver, the way pack animals hunted, flanking their quarry from each side, cutting off the escape angles, and then—snik!—snapping shut.

  The flare shed bloody light over a ten-foot radius. He had shot animals moving at a good clip before. Animals and other creatures, too. It was a matter of putting the bullet where they would be, not where they were at present. He listened. They might try to skirt the flare instead. But the quickest path, the one leading directly to their prey, would carry them through its—

  A shape fled through the light. Micah’s mind flinched—though not his body, which remained motionless. The shape was unlike anything in nature. It was composed of too many parts. A seething mass of hysterical dimension, a ball of limbs and tails and teeth, so goddamn many teeth.

  It flashed across the riverbed at terrific speed. Micah tracked it with his pistol and fired three times. The thing screeched and withdrew into the trees on the far side of the creek.

  The second one was coming now. The big sonofabitch. There was something terrible about its approach—the blundering, crashing awkwardness of its body. It sounded like a creature in almost unspeakable pain.

  Micah saw it. Not everything, but an outline. It was huge. It rose up before the light could engulf it and stood there, as a grizzly might on its hind legs. The dry earth of the creek bed cracked beneath it. The rotten stink of its body was overwhelming. Micah had smelled its equal only once before, when he had stumbled across a mass grave in a small village in Korea. The creature made the softest noises imaginable. Little clucks and pips and peeps, gentle exhalations that sounded like a baby drawing breaths in its sleep.

  It is a bear, Micah thought, shutting his mind to other possibilities. A rabid bear.

  He emptied a clip into the bear, center of mass. He did not feel good doing it, but the creature was ill and it would die by his hand now or days later, crazed with brain fever and foaming at the mouth. At close range, he could hear the slugs smacking into its meat. If that did not kill it, it ought to at least flatten its tires a little.

  The bear dropped. A rag of snot or bloody meat hit the flare and made it sputter . . .

  Then it began to advance on Micah again.

  Why don’t you just die? he thought tiredly.

  He retreated up the trail to find the others. The bear was still chasing them—and he could hear the other one, too, farther down and to the left of the path.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  They fled again. Slower this time, as they were exhausted and banged up. Just keep moving, Micah reasoned. Both animals had been hit. All they needed to do was keep hustling until their pursuers bled out.

  The path switched back up a steep hillside. All four of them scanned the bottomlands for some trace of the beasts. Their faces were shiny with sweat by the time they hit the summit. The land beneath was black and unknowable. They couldn’t hear anything.

  “Stay close,” said Micah.

  They moved down the trail in a tight knot. The path hit a bottleneck. The trees pinched in on either side—

  Minerva heard it before her brain was able to grip what was happening. A sly cracking under her boots—

  The ground broke apart under her feet. She plunged into darkness. She caught sight of Ebenezer scrabbling at the lip of the earth, bellowing madly, before his purchase slipped and he was falling with the rest of them.

  There came a strange weightlessness, that feeling in the pit of the stomach when a plane takes off. Oh, Minerva thought giddily. I’m falling. It lasted no more than half a second. Minerva hit the earth so hard that the breath was knocked out of her. Pain needled across her chest as her spine bowed—then something slammed into her skull with terrific force.

  12

  MINERVA’S EYES cracked open. She was squinting up at a box of daylight.

  “She’s coming to.”

  Where was she? She rolled over, moaning.
She could feel an enormous lump on her forehead—as if a hard-boiled egg had been sewn under her skin.

  “Minerva?” A woman’s voice. “How do you feel?”

  She opened her eyes fully. The sky was breathtakingly blue. Why couldn’t she see more of it? Why only that box? It was as if she were staring up from the bottom of an open elevator shaft.

  A face loomed over her. Micah’s. Blood lay gluey on his neck. Minerva swallowed. Her throat was as dry as chalk. Micah tipped his canteen to her lips. She drank and coughed.

  Ellen said, “Can you get up?”

  Minerva managed to sit up. Her skull thudded. She dropped her head between her knees and breathed deeply.

  “Where are we?” she said.

  “Trapped,” said Micah.

  “Trapped how?”

  “In a trap,” he answered her.

  She lifted her head. Jesus, that hurt—her skull felt like it was full of pissed-off hornets.

  They were in a pit. Clay bottom. The walls were sheer and went up fifteen feet. Severed roots poked through the dirt. Must have taken days to dig.

  “Was someone looking for a fucking brontosaurus?” she said.

  Micah picked up one of the snapped sticks littering the bottom of the pit. Minerva could see it had been sawed partway through. Her father had dug a similar pit trap on the west side of their shack to catch the foxes that had been killing their Buckeye chickens.

  “What’s that smell?”

  Ellen pointed behind Minerva. She craned her neck to spy a heap of spoiled meat in the corner, squirming with maggots.

  “Bait,” Ellen said.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Four hours or so,” said Ellen.

  What a mad galloping donkeyfuck this had turned into, Minerva thought. Stuck in a pit with their dicks hanging out. And as the cherry on top of this particular shit sundae, she had a knot the size of a goddamn golf ball on her head—she could see its shadow hanging above her left eye like some overripe fruit set to burst.

  “Can we get out?”

  “I tried already, standing on Micah’s shoulders,” said Ellen. “No such luck.”

  “Why didn’t you help them out?” Minerva growled at Ebenezer. “You got two broken legs?”

  “Not quite,” he said, pointing at his left ankle. His boot was off. His flesh was swollen at his ankle, the sock stretched out like a gruesome balloon.

  “You bust it?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Eb said. “Just a bad sprain.”

  Minerva said, “Lucky you. I’d have left you in here otherwise.”

  Ebenezer’s smile was as gruesome as his ankle. “You’re a peach.”

  Minerva stood. The blood rushed to her head. She swooned, steadying herself against the pit wall. It was then that they all heard a voice from somewhere above.

  “Who’s in there?”

  A man’s voice. Gruff and a little worried, but not threatening.

  Minerva still had one of her Colts. Micah had his pistol, too. But what were they going to do—shoot at the only person who might be able to get them out?

  “Hikers,” Micah called up. “Four of us.”

  “I see a gun on the ground up here.”

  “That would be mine,” said Eb. “I dropped it when the ground opened up and ate me. I’m sure you understand.”

  “The rest of you armed?” the same voice asked.

  “Pistols,” Micah said.

  “Why are you hiking with pistols?”

  “The same reason you must have dug this pit,” Minerva called back.

  The man said, “Toss them out.”

  Micah launched his Tokarev over the edge of the pit. Someone approached above. A shadow fell over the lip of the pit; then it withdrew.

  “Never seen a gun like this before,” the man called out. “You do some work to it?”

  “It is stock,” Micah lied.

  The man said, “I don’t know about that.”

  Minerva heaved her gun out next. “You going to help us or what?” she said.

  “Considering it,” the man said.

  Minerva clenched her teeth. Her head hived with pain. That she would be left at the mercy of these Bible suckers—who else could they be?—was infuriating. She wanted to quote scripture at them, something about the milk of human kindness or whatever, but she had never memorized a single verse.

  In time a rope was lowered over the side of the pit.

  “Mind your p’s and q’s. We are armed,” the man said.

  13

  THE COMPOUND known as Little Heaven was carved back against the encircling trees. The perimeter fence bowed under the menacing weight of the woods. The fence was fifteen feet tall and topped with coils of razor wire. Each supporting rib had been fashioned from a delimbed pine tree, with chain-link fence strung between them. It gave the place the look of a backwoods prison. Upon her approach, Minerva could see the roof of a long, warehouse-like structure, and the smaller peaks of the outbuildings scattered around it. She was half shocked to not spot guard towers manned by shotgun-toting Jesus freaks.

  It had been a two-mile hike from the pit to Little Heaven. By the time they arrived, they had learned the names of the men who had hauled them out: Otis Langtree and Charlie Fairweather. They seemed the same age, mid- to late-thirties. Otis was the bigger of the two, but both looked like they could use a good meal. Their faces were drawn, their eyes tunneled too far into their skulls.

  Minerva learned a bit more about the men besides their names, as they were both happy to talk. Charlie had been a member of the flock for about three years; Otis, much longer. Otis was single; Charlie had a wife and a son, Ben. Charlie had worked at a box factory before coming here. Otis did not speak much of his history. They had both made the decision to join their leader, giving their life savings over to the erection and continuance of Little Heaven.

  They both carried .30-30 rifles. Charlie had a Ruger pistol in a holster, too.

  “Sorry you fell in,” Otis said. “We dug the pit for animals.”

  Ebenezer was slung between Micah and Ellen; he limped painfully along. Minerva refused to help him.

  “What did you dig it to catch, pray tell?” Eb asked.

  “Bear?” said Otis. “Wolves? Something’s been carrying off our dogs. We used to have five or six. Then a month or so back they started to go missing. Squirmed under gaps in the fence, never came back. Got eaten, we figured.”

  “Or ran into something bigger and hungrier than they were,” Charlie said.

  “You do see the odd thing out there at night,” Otis said. “Just shapes in the trees. A flash and flicker. What’s born wild stays wild despite us being here, you know? All God’s creatures.”

  Charlie had spat in the dirt when he heard that. Minerva noticed he had a way of spitting that conveyed total disdain.

  “Dogs are one thing,” Otis went on, “but we got kids about, too. Not that they’re foolish enough to scramble under the fence, especially come nightfall, but . . .”

  “We dug the pit ten feet deep.” Charlie hitched up his pants, which were swimming around his hips. “We hit a seam of caliche at eight feet. After that it was hard slogging. Busted a few shovels. Our hands had blisters on top of blisters.”

  Otis said, “Ten feet—what’s going to get out of that?”

  Charlie said, “Well, something did. We come back one morning to find the top brush all busted. But the pit was empty.”

  “Maybe it didn’t fall in,” Minerva said. “What if it just kind of carried over the top, like over thin ice as it’s breaking?”

  Otis said, “No, it was in there.”

  “The bottom of the pit was all torn up,” Charlie told her. “Claw marks dug deep into the clay. A lot of them, too. Like they were put there by an animal made entirely of claws.”

  “And teeth,” said Otis.

  “Yeah, teeth, too,” Charlie said.

  “Bear?” said Micah.

  Charlie shrugged. �
�Could only be. But they aren’t supposed to be that size in this state. You got browns, blacks. They can be ornery, yeah, but not too big.”

  “Could be a Kodiak roamed over from California,” Otis hazarded. “A rogue.”

  “Anyway, we dug the pit deeper.” Charlie spat again. “Another five feet.”

  Otis said, “And covered it over same as before. A few days later we check and see the cover’s broken again.” Otis shook his head. “We creep up and—”

  “Empty as a politician’s smile,” said Charlie.

  Otis said, “At fifteen feet. And we spotted something else strange, too.”

  “What was that?” said Minerva.

  Otis swallowed heavily. “There were sticks jammed into the side of the pit. The sticks we’d laid across the top, yeah? Stabbed into the dirt all the way up. It was like whatever had been inside used them as hand-holds, right? To climb out.”

  “What animal would have the sense to do that?” Ellen asked. “Or the dexterity?”

  “No animal on earth,” Minerva said.

  UPON THEIR ARRIVAL at Little Heaven, Otis and Charlie led them past a few pickups and dirt bikes to the wrought iron gate. Each half of the gate was ten feet wide and nearly twenty feet high. What a hassle it would’ve been, hauling that damn thing out into the sticks. A golden letter L was inset on one side. On the other side, H.

  It was unlocked by a woman in overalls. She did not introduce herself or speak to Otis and Charlie. Her face had the same winnowed aspect as the men’s. Minerva found it unnerving. She pictured carnivorous roots anchored to the pads of everyone’s feet, slowly sucking the life out of them.

  The grounds of the compound were uncluttered. A parade square sat in the center. There were bunkhouses and storage sheds. A tiny playground. Minerva spotted a strip of flypaper dangling from a strut of an open toolshed. Not a single insect—fly or spider or midge—was gummed to the sticky coil.

  A row of outhouses sat behind the fence on the easternmost edge of the compound. They sat quite close to the woods. Minerva wondered how many of these people would risk a late-night piss, what with their dogs going missing left and right.