by Nick Cutter
“What’ll be here?”
The Reverend did not answer. His fingers tightened. “Bullets, Brother. Now.”
Virgil wasn’t sure he wanted to give the man more ammo. He got a sense the next round the Rev chambered might be earmarked for Virg’s noggin. But with the whipped-dog servility that had been knit to his nature for years, he went into the vestry and got the bullets. His eyes fell on the shape of the Conkwright woman with her brains bashed in.
When he returned, the Reverend handed him the gun. “Load it.”
Virgil did as he asked. It was so much easier this way. Just follow instructions. Virgil always got into trouble when he tried to think for himself. Better to put it in someone else’s hands. His mind relaxed as he thumbed the rounds into the pistol. The Reverend led; Virgil obeyed. Easy as peach ’n’ pie.
He handed the gun back. The Reverend jammed it down the front of his trousers. He chuckled.
“Look at me. Johnny Six-guns!”
Virgil managed a tinny laugh. It was kinda funny. The Reverend with his fancy hair sweated flat as a pancake and hanging over his ears, with a roscoe peeking out of his pants. He couldn’t help noticing the Reverend also sported a huge erection. It jabbed against the tight material, hard and somehow bladelike.
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me, sailor?
Virgil laughed again, a little hysterically. Man, life moved fast, didn’t it? One day this, the next day that. Go with the flow, Joe.
The Reverend wrapped his hand around the back of Virgil’s neck and pulled him forward until their foreheads touched. “These next twenty minutes are the most important ones of your life. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” Virgil said, not understanding at all.
“If you stay the course, your reward will be infinite. Would you like that, Brother Swicker?”
“Sure, I guess.”
The Reverend grinned. “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart.”
The Reverend then went to the nearest child, a girl of about eight. He grabbed her ankles and pulled. The girl’s dress hiked up. Her panties were wet on account of her pissing herself. The Reverend dragged her out the door down the steps—her skull made a hollow bonk on each stair—and laid her on the ground not far from the fence.
When he came back in, Virgil hadn’t moved. The Reverend frowned.
“Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”
Virgil hopped to it. It didn’t take long—about twenty minutes, like the Rev said. At the end, the kids were lying side by side all in a row. They were asleep, not dead, their legs twitching. Most of them had peed themselves, and they began to involuntarily shiver when the piss cooled on their thighs.
“Yes, oh yes,” the Reverend cooed. “We have done good works today.”
“Why . . . ?”
The Rev cut his eyes at Virgil. “Why what?”
“Why . . . the kids?”
“Because,” the Rev said, “it has always been the children.”
The Reverend’s headlamp eyes were staring into the woods. His body was motionless as if he’d been frozen. Virgil stared in the same direction.
Something was coming, just like the Reverend promised. No, not just one thing—many. Virgil rubbed his eyes—he really did that, just like an actor in a movie who thinks he’s seeing a mirage. It didn’t make sense, was why. This all felt unreal, same as a movie.
The shapes drew closer. Virgil saw them . . . but it couldn’t be. There was something else behind those shapes, too—something larger, draped in shadow. Gooseflesh climbed the knobs of Virgil’s spine and spread around his neck in a pebbled collar. His breath came in small, whiny gasps like a hurt dog.
“For you,” the Reverend said to the shadowy thing. “All for you.”
Virgil’s mind broke a little at the sight—or maybe broke a lot. It was hard to tell with minds, because the world didn’t change. Only the way you processed it did.
Hey! Just go with the flow, Joe.
11
EBENEZER PILOTED the track machine up the path leading to Little Heaven. The high beams illuminated the pines. The machine lumbered over stumps and downed logs, charging through the river without issue. He drove it with ease; the steering levers required only small adjustments. Not a single bug splattered the windshield. It then came to Eb: he’d been in the woods for days and didn’t have one mosquito or blackfly or tick bite.
He set the brake and idled at the base of a shallow rise. From here, the path ran straight to the gates of Little Heaven with no aggressive turns or bends.
He let out a shaky breath. “Right. Hop to it, my son.”
He unzipped the cab’s roof. The sky was salted with muted stars. He stood on the seat and hopped over the front panel into the bed. Working quickly, he laid out the shotgun, the Colts, the spare clips. He strapped the clips to the front panel of the bed with duct tape. Then he cut three lengths of rope and tied them around the topmost slat of the panel. He fastened the shotgun and the pistols to the end of each rope—shotgun on the left side, pistols on the right. The guns hung from the ropes and clinked lightly against the panels, all within reach.
He cut a longer length of rope and threaded it through his belt loops. He pulled one of the Cubanos from his pocket, unwrapped it, and nipped the nub off with his teeth. He spat it out and flicked the Zippo and thumbed the flywheel and lit the stogie. A deep inhale, a cough, then he hopped down from the tailgate.
The forest did not stir, but ahead—and not far, either—he could sense them. The skin tightened up in his throat.
He found a stick that looked like it might work and opened the driver-side door. He set one end of the stick on the gas pedal and wedged the other end under the seat; the engine growled. He tested to make sure it wouldn’t jar loose, then locked the steering levers so the machine would drive straight ahead. He puffed on the cigar and blew a few smoke rings. It had been ages since he’d had one of these. Why in blazes had he quit? Lovely habit.
He licked his lips. His mouth was dry as a wood chip. Ebenezer’s entire life boiled down to the following few minutes. Well, hell, couldn’t the same be said of any man? There was that handful of minutes that really mattered, and then there were all the other minutes that made up that man’s life. And those minutes had led him here, hadn’t they? That big clock in the sky was always ticking against fate.
“Fortune favors the brave,” he whispered. “Or does it favor the lunatics? Either way, Ebenezer, my son, you’ve got a coin flip’s chance.”
He popped the transmission into drive. The track machine lurched forward. He swung himself over the front panel into the bed. He twisted the knobs on the flamethrower’s canisters and heard a hiss; he lit the nozzle with the Zippo—a small blue flame like a furnace’s pilot light. He shrugged the weapon over his shoulders.
Steadying himself as the machine clattered up the incline, he tied one end of the rope around his waist to the wood slat on his left side of the front panel, then knotted the other end on the right side. He leaned back, testing the makeshift harness. He could sway his body a foot to the left or the right along the rope, close enough to cut his guns loose if the flamethrower petered out.
Ebenezer fired a flare into the trees ahead on his right. It traced a low orbit and dropped, sputtering, into the woods two hundred yards ahead. He reloaded the gun and shot another flare into the woods to his left. By their fitful glow, he could see things moving, their bodies crossing the flickering light in an agitated manner.
He sucked on the cigar and cracked his neck to drain his sinus cavities. His heart was pounding, but his hands barely shook. He would kill them all if possible, or he would die in the midst of killing however many he could. They would not scare him ever again.
That’s my boy, he could hear his aunt Hazel say. My Ebenezer, he’s no hog.
“Git aloooong, little dawwww-gies, git aloooooong,” he crooned.
The machine rumbled over the rise. The lights of Little Heaven winked in
the distance.
“Come on, you bastards.”
The machine rumbled ahead. The wrecked pickup came into view. The windshield smashed, some luckless sonofabitch’s headless body still tilted against its rear wheel. The flares brightened in the wind that scoured the woods. They were there—Christ, he could see them now. Some large, some smaller, all of them hunched and ungodly. He charted the air above, concerned one of them might plummet from the sky, like the one that had mangled his ear. But they remained where they were.
The machine charged steadily toward the gate; it stood less than a hundred yards off, moonlight glinting off the gilded L and H. Eb glanced behind him and saw nothing in pursuit. He had not really anticipated reaching the compound—he’d half expected to be ripped to pieces before reaching the gates, although it had tickled him to picture the track machine crashing through it, propelling his mangled corpse straight to and then through the chapel doors. But he was alive, less-than-miraculously so, and had to step lively now.
He grabbed for the bowie knife. The machine hit a dip, jostling him; the knife slipped from his fingers.
“Shit!”
He stretched for the blade as it clattered on the metal bed. The rope threaded through his belt loops prevented him from bending down any farther. The flamethrower dipped; the scorching nozzle brushed his leg and he let out a screech. The gates were fifty yards away. If he didn’t cut himself free and get into the driver’s seat, the machine would—
His fingers closed on the knife. He sawed through the rope. When he was free, he shrugged off the flamethrower and clambered over the front panel, toppling into the cab just as the machine hit the entrance to Little Heaven, tearing through the gates like Tinker Toys; the iron squealed as they tore off their hinges, crumpling under the machine’s determined progression.
Eb sat up, blinking a trickle of blood out of his eye. The machine was making a beeline for a utility shed. He didn’t see anybody, but figured they should be awake by now, scurrying to the nearest window to see what fresh hell had invaded their midst. It’s the cavalry, you miserable sods!
He grabbed the stick pinning the gas pedal down; it wouldn’t budge. The machine hit the shed broadside, reducing it to matchsticks. He kicked at the stick until it snapped. With no pressure on the gas pedal, the machine slowed immediately. He stomped on the brake pedal. The track machine jerked to a stop.
He crawled up into the bed and hacked the shotgun free from the rope. He swung around with it, ready to blast anything that had a mind to barrel through the gates after him. But the path was empty. Far off, the flares continued to gutter on the forest floor.
He hopped off the tailgate. The spotlights flickered around the compound; some were now going dead for several seconds before struggling back to life. Though he couldn’t see well in the fitful light, Eb could tell that nobody was out. A vague sense of dread zephyred through him. He’d come back. Jesus, what a fool. He palmed blood out of his eyes; it trickled steadily down from the cut on his head. His cigar had remained clamped between his teeth all this time, but it was snapped nearly in half. He tore off the dangly bit.
A restless silence overhung the compound. He stared at the chapel—door open, lights weakly glimmering. A body lay on the grass ten yards from the door, bathed in the jumpy spots. He gripped the shotgun and headed toward it. Ebenezer’s dread intensified with each step. The inside of the chapel came into view.
“Good Christ . . .”
His feet ground to a halt. The cigar slipped from his lips. What in the name of—
“Ebenezer?”
He swung around to see Ellen and the boy. Their shoulders were carpeted with wood chips.
“What happened here?”
“He killed them,” the boy said quietly. “The Reverend.”
“. . . Everyone? Micah and Min—?”
Ellen shook her head. “They left after you did. In the afternoon. To search for the missing kids. They went deeper into the woods, moving north. Towards—”
Eb held up his hand. Micah and Minerva’s whereabouts were of less integral importance than what the boy had just said. “The Reverend killed them? Who? How many? How did he—?”
“All of them, Ebenezer. His entire flock. In the chapel during the sermon.” Ellen ran a trembling hand through her hair. “I’m not sure how he did it.”
“They threw up blood,” the boy said hollowly.
“He must have poisoned them,” Ellen said. “You can almost smell it.”
Poison, Eb thought. The madman poisoned his own people. Part of him wasn’t terribly surprised. He’d sniffed a hint of lunacy in Amos Flesher the first time he’d set eyes on him—the itchy gaze, that switchblade smile. The line between prophet and lunatic was a thin one indeed. And his followers were just that. Every lemming off the cliff. He could see it happening. Yes, all too easily.
“And you didn’t attend the service?” he said.
Ellen shook her head. “I wouldn’t have been welcome. And Nate stayed with me.”
“Tell me what else happened,” Eb said.
“After he killed them, the Reverend came out of the chapel,” Ellen said. “He shot . . .”
She nodded to the body on the grass but would not say who it was. Ebenezer could guess. Nate didn’t look as if he’d been crying, though his eyes were compassed by swollen red flesh—as if tears were lurking close to the surface, but he was wise enough to know this wasn’t the time to grieve the loss. That, or perhaps he was mildly glad his father was gone. Ebenezer didn’t know the boy well enough to say.
“After that, Flesher shot at me,” Ellen continued. “So I ran. Hid in the woodpile. Nate found me. The Reverend gave up trying to find us. Other things to worry about, I guess.”
“Other things?”
Neither of them answered.
“The children aren’t dead. At least I’m pretty sure,” Ellen told him. “They dragged them out of the chapel.”
“Who?”
“The Reverend’s hired man. The one you beat up this morning.”
“Virgil. He and the Reverend are the only ones left?”
Ellen nodded.
Eb said, “So they dragged the kids out and . . . ?”
Ellen and the boy exchanged a look.
“Something came,” the boy said, his voice nearly inaudible.
“What was it?”
“Out of the woods.” The boy stared at his feet as if he couldn’t bear to look at the chapel. “It . . . took them. Or . . .”
“Or what, boy? For Christ’s sake, wh—”
“Or they went with it willingly,” Ellen said softly. “Anyway, they all went.”
“The children?”
Ellen and the boy nodded, neither one meeting Eb’s eye.
“It took the children,” Ellen said.
Something always wants the fucking children, Eb thought. “And the Reverend and Virgil with them?”
More nods. Eb swiped a hand across his mouth; he felt hot, his skin clammy, first signs of the flu. “What took them?”
They did not speak for some time. Finally Ellen said, “It wasn’t human.”
“Or an animal,” the boy said.
“Or one of those things in the woods,” Ellen said. “It was something else entirely.”
Ebenezer’s hands clenched on the shotgun. The track machine’s engine ticking down was the only sound in an otherwise still night.
Not human, hmm? he thought. Well, there’s hardly much surprise in that, now is there? Not a lot of humans left in these here parts. Outnumbered, outgunned. Last of a dying breed. We’ve trapped ourselves in the killing jar, all of us for one reason or another. I may be daftest of all because I escaped, only to fly back in. And something’s pumping in the ether now.
His shoulders slumped. What else could he do? In for a penny . . .
“Which way did they go?”
12
THEY WERE ON THEIR WAY back to Little Heaven when it came.
Minerva felt a dry electrica
l tang at the back of her throat that reminded her of those hot afternoons during her childhood when the sky would scud over with clouds: the taste of a thunderstorm gathering over the horizon.
She checked up in the middle of the ashen path.
“What?” said Micah.
She flicked her head toward the trees. Micah got the hint. They moved quickly, hiding in the heavy dark of the firs ten feet off the path.
The notes of a flute drifted through the air. Jangling, discordant, yet possessed of a rhythm that touched a hidden center in Minerva’s chest, a second heart within the main organ.
She didn’t see much of it. Only a flurrying of legs—the low-hanging branches, laden with needles, prevented her from viewing anything in its entirety. The first pair of legs were abnormally long and stork-like; they passed in a mad dervish, spinning and pirouetting and high-kicking like a court jester. The flute music intensified, sharp notes invading Minerva’s skull and itching at her brain. Other, smaller sets of legs followed. Pale legs streaked with blood. Feet clad in dusty boots or buckled shoes with ruffled socks. They passed silently, only the crunch of their soles on the dead gray earth, their movements manic as they jigged and capered toward the black rock.
Neither Micah nor Minerva moved for some time after the procession passed. Their breath rattled out of their lungs where they knelt under the trees. Micah’s eyelids were squeezed shut. When he finally opened them, she saw a new hardness in his working eye.
“We have to go back,” Micah said. “I have to get down there.”
Her chest tightened. “Into the . . .”
“That is where they will be.”
Minerva started to shiver. She couldn’t stop.
“Shug, I don’t think I can.”
“I understand.”
“That cave,” she went on, feeling the need to explain. “Those . . . fingers. Those noises. I want to help. I just don’t think . . .”
“I understand.”
She put a hand on his leg. His muscles jumped. “Do you have any clue what’s down there, Shug?”
In time he said, “I know it is a bad thing. But then . . .”