Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  “Now do the same with the wine,” the Reverend told him.

  “You want me to sugar up the wine, too?”

  The Reverend sneered. “Did I stutter?”

  Virgil dumped a sack of Domino sugar into the sacramental wine. The stuff was pretty much unsweetened grape juice, not a drop of booze in it—if so, Virgil and Cy would’ve necked it long ago. He tested it. He just about got diabetes from a single sip. The Rev disappeared with the wine for a couple of minutes. When he returned, it also had a chemical tang—but different from the Kool Aid.

  Now, on the Rev’s cue, Virgil wheeled in the cart with the jugs sitting on it. The people in the chapel seemed happy. The Reverend had trotted out the old dog and pony, put on a real whizbang of a show. Now they all wore the goony grins of lobotomy victims.

  “We will fight this abomination,” the Rev was saying. “We will save the children. We will restore Little Heaven to what it was—the home of the chosen people!”

  “Hallelujah!” the crowd yelped.

  “We will beat back the scourge!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “I alone can do this.”

  “Praise you, Father!”

  They linked hands and swayed in the pews like hypnotized cobras.

  “Come forward, all of you, and accept your offering,” said the Reverend. “Wine for adults and juice for the children, as always.”

  Virgil poured wine and Kool-Aid into the cups: only a few mouthfuls in each, just as the Reverend had instructed earlier. The worshippers stumbled up with those dozy grins pasted on their faces. They looked like moths flying into a bug zapper. They each took a cup and sat down. If they had children, they took cups of juice for them. The Reverend watched closely. Virgil noticed the bead of sweat on his nose and the way his fingers trembled.

  As Virgil poured, his gaze drifted to the window. Cyril was standing outside in the dark. His face was white as lard. He was grinning, but it wasn’t dopey, like those of the worshippers. More of a leer. Cyril pressed his face to the window. It went flatter than skin ought to—

  Virgil kept pouring, managing to not spill a drop. Cy’s lips were moving like he was speaking, but it didn’t look like talking so much as chewing. Then poor Cyril’s left eye burst and a thick black runner leaked down his cheek and—

  Virgil closed his eyes, hoping Cy would be gone when he opened them. But he was still there a few seconds later. Was Virgil the only one who could see him? The black goo running down Cy’s face started to curl upward—it was then that Virgil realized his eye hadn’t burst at all. His eye was already gone and a centipede had been coiled up inside the empty socket; the insect scurried down under Cy’s jaw, then up around his ear before tucking itself back inside his socket, neat as a pin.

  Groovy trick, huh? Cy’s voice chimed in Virgil’s head.

  Sure thing, Cy, Virgil thought queasily. A real screamer.

  Soon the drinks were poured and everyone was sitting again. Their eyes had that docile glaze. The eyes of ritual junkies.

  The Reverend said, “We shall drink the purifying tonic of the Lord. The children first, then the adults. In that order. This is as He wishes. As your prophet wishes.”

  The children raised the cups to their lips. Some of them coughed a little on account of the sweetness. But none of them spat it out. Watching them, Virgil understood. If Cyril asked him to drink that Kool-Aid, Virgil would have done it in a New York minute. That was what followers did, after all. No questions asked. Who would dare question the Lord? Why question fate?

  The Reverend leaned forward. A smile touched the edges of his lips.

  “Now you, my older children. Drink. To the very last . . . drop.”

  9

  EBENEZER REACHED GRINDER’S SWITCH as the sun was setting. He wheeled the Olds into the sundry store where they’d stocked up a week ago.

  The bell tinkled when he kicked the screen door open. The sick-looking shopkeep who had told them how to get to Little Heaven stood behind the counter. Eb snatched a bottle of Yoo-hoo from the cooler. He drank it and dropped the bottle on the floor. He burped loudly, grabbed another one, and started to drink it, too.

  “You think I’m running a food bank here?” the man said peevishly.

  Ebenezer held one finger up—Hold on, I’ll get to you—tipped the bottle to his lips and drained it. He dropped it and grabbed a box of Goobers off the candy rack. He ripped the top off and walked toward the counter, tossing chocolate-covered peanuts in the air and catching them in his mouth.

  “Remember me, my fine fellow?”

  The man squinted. “You figure I should?”

  “Oh, who knows? I’m sure you meet a lot of sophisticated people.”

  The man was reaching for something under the counter. “You got some kind of mental problem, boy?”

  Eb dropped the box of candy and grabbed the man’s wrist before it could clear the counter. He lifted the man’s arm up and brought it down sharply on the ledge. The gun fell out of the man’s hand—a .25-caliber popgun with hockey tape wrapped around the butt. Ebenezer brought the man’s bony wrist up and down on the counter again and again until something went snap. The man shrieked and fell, hitting his head on a box of Manila Blunts cigars on a shelf behind the counter.

  “You knew,” Eb said while the man mewled and clutched his broken wrist. “It was death up there and you let us go anyway.”

  “I don’t know nothing, you black sonofabitch,” the man whined.

  Eb hurdled the counter and dropped down beside the cringing wreck. He punched the man in the face, quite hard. The man squawked.

  “There’s more where that came from,” Eb promised.

  Blood poured out of the man’s nostrils and bubbled over his lips.

  “You mentioned a track machine.”

  “Wh-what?” the man blubbered.

  “A track machine, you called it. Some kind of retrofitted tank.”

  The man bared his teeth . . . then dropped his eyes and nodded.

  “Where can I find it?”

  “Why the hell would you go back?” the man said. “You got away, crafty prick.”

  Ebenezer restrained the impulse to pummel the man into unconsciousness.

  “An address, please. And if you call the police after I leave, rest assured I will come back and slit your throat before they take me to jail. Are we understood?”

  “Yeah . . . understood.”

  “Good. That wrist will heal up fine. You will be up and grease-monkeying again before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  THE TRACK MACHINE sat in the yard of a farmhouse along the western flank of Grinder’s Switch. Eb parked a ways down the road and approached on foot.

  It was an honest-to-goodness World War II tank, the M2A1 or perhaps the M3, stripped to the treads. A bed had been installed over its back end, same as on a pickup truck, with wood-slat sidings all around. The cab of a Ford pickup had been chopped down and welded to the front end.

  Ebenezer slunk through the long grass, climbed the treads, and stole a look through the driver-side window. The interior looked nearly the same as any truck, except instead of a wheel, a pair of steel steering rods protruded from the floor. The original roof had been removed and a zippered flap installed, turning it into a convertible of sorts. It even had an automatic transmission.

  Ebenezer glanced at the farmhouse. The kitchen light was burning. This wouldn’t be your garden-variety thievery. He would need a few minutes to figure out how the track machine drove, which meant he could count on a visit from its owner. He tried the driver’s door. Unlocked. God bless the trusting rubes who populated this scratch-ass town. He slid into the cab. Gas and brake pedals, same as a car. There was no wheel, which meant no steering collar, which was what he would normally break open to access the ignition wires for a hot-wire job.

  He flipped down the visor. A pair of keys fell into his lap. People were stupid, hallelujah.

  The ignition switch was located under the seat, between his legs. He
slid the key in. The machine rumbled to life. The enormous engine sent a shiver through his body. He popped the manual brake and pressed his foot on the gas pedal. Nothing. He frowned and tried the brake pedal. The machine trundled forward. So the brake and gas were reversed. Good to know.

  He pulled the rod on his left side. The rod on his right shifted forward automatically. The machine turned on its axis until it was pointed at the farmhouse. He caught frantic movement behind the drapes.

  He swung the machine around and set off in the direction of the Oldsmobile. The tank rampaged across the yard. The left tread hit an ornamental rock at the edge of the driveway; the machine tilted, throwing Eb against the driver’s door as it scraped over the rock, and hammered back down.

  “Oh, I like this!”

  He pulled up beside the Olds. When he hopped out, he saw someone running across the field. Next he caught a flash of something streaking across the ground toward him, much closer. He managed to scramble back into the cab the instant before a dog hurled itself against the door, growling and slavering.

  Eb pulled a pistol from his waistband. He could see the owner of both the dog and the machine drawing near. The man was carrying a pitchfork. Who did he think was stealing his property, Frankenstein’s monster?

  “Get after ’im, Pepper!” Eb heard the man shout. “Tear his trespassin’ ass a new one!”

  Eb unrolled the window a few inches. He slid the barrel of the pistol through the gap and angled it at the leaping dog. The owner froze.

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, but I would,” Eb said. “Unless you bring it to heel.”

  The man whistled sharply. The dog immediately quieted down.

  “You just stay calm, Mister,” the man said.

  Ebenezer shut the machine off and hopped out. The man could have been forty but looked much older, his face prematurely ruined by drink or too much sun or simply life in Grinder’s Switch. Either way, he seemed to be taking the theft of his machine with good grace. That probably had something to do with the gun pointed at his face.

  “I just paid that sucker off,” he said. “You wouldn’t go stealing it from me, now would you?”

  His appeal to Ebenezer’s better nature was uplifting, if completely misplaced.

  “I will be taking it,” Eb said. “But I’ll bring it back, as I have no use for this kind of contraption in my day-to-day life—and if I don’t return with it, you can come find it in or around Little Heaven. You know where that is, don’t you?”

  The man scuffed his toes in the dirt. “Guess I do, sure.”

  “Those people helped pay this great walloping beast off, didn’t they?”

  “You could say.”

  “I’m going to toss my equipment in,” Eb said. “Then I’ll be off. If you and Chopper there play nice, I won’t have to shoot you.”

  The man jabbed his pitchfork into the lawn. “We’ll be plenty nice, Mister. And her name’s Pepper. Goddamn it.”

  Eb hurled the guns and flamethrower into the bed of the track machine. The gormless man and his dog observed with matching expressions of tight-lipped impotence—Eb wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the dog, but it did look quite pissed.

  “You planning on starting World War Three?”

  Eb gave the man a look. “How many times have you been to Little Heaven?”

  The man shrugged. “Four, maybe five.”

  “When was your last visit?”

  “Month ago, coulda been.”

  “Did you ever find anything strange about the place?”

  The man appeared to seriously consider this. “They take their faith a little too sincerely, you ask me. Me and my wife go to church on Sundays, and Maggie—that’s my wife—she bakes vanilla squares for the annual bake sale. But if someone said to me, Hey, Arnie, guess what? God needs you to live in the middle of the woods as a test of faith . . . Mister, I don’t think the Lord much cares where we practice our faith.”

  Eb nodded. “You seem a decent bloke. Steer clear of the place.”

  Ebenezer clambered into the cab. He popped the manual brake, and the machine thundered off toward the trail leading to Little Heaven.

  10

  LITTLE HEAVEN’S COOK, an old shipwreck named Tom Guthrie, was the first to start choking. His face went pink, then brightened to red as he clutched at his throat. The chapel quickly filled with the sound of hoarse gasps and the frenetic swinging of limbs. By the time Guthrie started coughing up blood, the rest of the adult congregants were either in paroxysms of their own or staggering around wide-eyed as their throats closed up to pinholes.

  Seeing it, Amos was relieved to note that he had selected correctly. He had considered weed killer, but had ultimately settled on drain cleaner. A wise choice, it turned out.

  Ammate Weed Killer, by Du Pont. Better things for better living . . . through CHEMISTRY! read the tagline on its label. Effective against poison oak, sumac, and ivy. Charlie Fairweather had suggested they buy a drum of the stuff; better to douse the grounds than have the kids scratching themselves crazy and having to run back to civilization for tubes of calamine lotion. Amos had snuck into the equipment shed yesterday and read the ingredients on the drum carefully. Ammonium sulfamate was the active chemical. My, that sure sounded dangerous. He put a handful of the coarse white crystals in a paper sack and took it to the kitchen, where he mixed it with sugared water. It sent up a powerful smell. He was unsure they would drink it, even with the sugared-wine overlay. He cut a potato in half and doused its weeping flesh with the sugary weed killer. The reaction was mild, only a faint sputtering. That probably wouldn’t do.

  After this dispiriting test, Amos rummaged under the kitchen sink. He found a gallon jug of drain cleaner. Sodium hydroxide. Ooh, that sounded promising. He read the warning label. Breathing difficulty due to throat swelling. Severe burns and tissue damage. Vomiting. Rapid drop in blood pressure. Loss of vision. At the bottom: Do not administer vinegar or lemon juice. Will cause more severe burning.

  He mixed the cleaner with sugar water. It foamed up in a mad froth. The smell wasn’t overpowering. He poured the mixture on a potato. It sizzled, reducing the spud to starchy liquid. Okeydokey. Drain cleaner it would be.

  Amos stood at the pulpit as his congregants drank the toxic brew. Most did it in one gulp; a few of them grimaced as if it was bitter medicine, then finished the dose. It wasn’t so odd. He’d known rummies in the Tenderloin to drink Sterno or hair spray or worse.

  After the initial wave of choking commenced, Amos surveyed the crowd. Virgil Swicker’s eyes were wide with shock. Amos clambered down amid the tormented wheezes of his worshippers and jerked the pistol from the waistband of Virgil’s trousers. The gun was small but heavy—it felt thrillingly powerful in his hands. Virgil let him take it without issue. Bright penny.

  The flighty screams of the children pealed off the roof beams. Their Kool-Aid had been spiked with a powerful barbiturate. Nell Conkwright suffered night terrors. She had confessed this to Amos years ago. Dreams where her children were eaten by fanged things right before her eyes. The doctor prescribed sedatives of increasing potency. The ones she took were powerful enough to put an elephant to sleep. He had instructed Virgil to liberate the bottle of pills from her bunkhouse. More than enough to do the trick. Amos only hoped it wouldn’t put the children into slumberland permanently.

  The children shrieked as their parents shuffled about with their mouths opening and closing like fish suffocating in the bottom of a boat. Their mothers’ and fathers’ eyes were full of childlike fear; many of those eyes were completely bloodshot from the force of their vomiting, which they began to do uncontrollably shortly after swallowing the toxic vino. At first their puke was the candy-apple red of the cheap wine, but it turned increasingly thick and frothy, with the deeper red tinge of blood. Many of them were hacking up pulpy shreds of tissue as well; these spongy bits fell from their mouths in moist rags, where they lay steaming on the chapel floor.

  “People!�
�� Amos shouted. “You must drink the antidote! Take God’s cure!”

  He reached under the cart and produced a tray of plastic cups filled with clear liquid. The congregants who heard his voice—the ones who weren’t already thrashing on the floor—made their tortured way toward him. The first was Leo Gerson, a bowlegged man with a pockmarked face, which was now red, and his neck horribly swollen, as if someone had stuffed a thrashing cat down his gullet. He grabbed two cups, the second for his wife, who lay on the floor between the pews with her legs jutting into the aisle, her modest unpatterned frock rucked up to display her enormous—yet still modest—white cotton panties. Gerson tipped the cup to his lips with hands that trembled so badly he spilled a mouthful down his chin. He turned back to his wife, but his legs abruptly went out from under him. He crumpled to the floor, spasming in pain.

  Seven or eight other congregants drank from the cups; none of them noted the tang of white vinegar. By the time they glugged it down, Leo had managed to crawl back to his wife. The floor behind him was streaked with blood and fuming chunks of meat. The smell inside the church was utterly foul—the stink of acidified flesh.

  Virgil stared at Amos helplessly. “What . . . ? What the hell did you do to them?”

  “I purified their souls.”

  Nell Conkwright stood in the middle of the aisle. Her face was an angry purple shade, her throat a distended bulge as if she’d swallowed a baseball. Her hubby, Pious Brother Conkwright, was slumped over a pew; his buttocks were facing Amos, and the Reverend saw a dark stain on the seat of Pious Conk’s sensible trousers. Nell’s eight-year-old daughter clung to her mother’s leg, shrieking. Nell cradled the girl’s face with gentle affection, as if knowing exactly what was happening; she coughed up thick knotty structures from somewhere deep in her guts; those structures wriggled between her lips like worms and hit the floor with moist splats. Her daughter continued screaming, but even then her eyelids were drooping.

  “Oh my God,” Virgil said. “Oh my Gooooooo—”