by Nick Cutter
It was hard work dragging her through the tunnel, but Amos labored with a song in his heart. After all the struggle and compromise amid his inferiors, his day of reward had arrived . . . or night—he could no longer tell. Time had lost all meaning. Only the darkness, heavy and unending.
The tunnel bellied into a vast vault. The floor was scattered with items of clothing . . . The beam swept over what appeared to be a body, but it was so ghastly that he could scarcely credit it as being human. Its head had been blown apart.
The children’s bodies were here, too. Eli, the Redhill brats, the Rasmussen urchin—
From somewhere in the nether reaches of the chamber: timid, fluttery inhales. A small pair of lungs drawing delicate sips of air. He shone the flashlight toward that sound. He saw or thought he could see a small shape heaved up against the far wall, its legs cycling uselessly—
He caught sound behind him, from the tunnel. Someone was approaching.
He flicked the flashlight off and left the woman on the floor. He hid.
MICAH FOUND ELLEN in the chamber. Her face was a mask of blood.
He rushed over to her. Inspected her head. The wound was bloody but superficial. He shone the flashlight on the bodies of Preston and . . . the others. Nothing moved now, and nothing had moved since he’d been here.
Ellen was breathing regularly. He pinned one of her eyelids open; her pupil dilated when the light touched it. Okay, okay, she wasn’t—
A hand slid around his hips. He tried to knock it away, but it was too quick; the hand unsheathed the bayonet. Someone crashed down on him. A pudgy, antic body wriggling on top of his chest. The Reverend: Micah could tell by the reek of his goddamn pomade.
THE FIRE WAS CONSUMING ever-greater swathes of the forest.
“How much longer?” Eb asked.
Minerva checked her watch. Seven minutes had passed. The children were waiting in the track machine. Eb sat behind the wheel.
Every man jack of us has to make his own decision in this nasty old world. Minerva figured Shug had made his. She hoped his was the right one for him, and she hoped the decision she was about to make was right for everyone else.
Please, Micah. Just get your stubborn ass out of there alive.
“Fire it up,” she said to Ebenezer. “Let’s cut and run.”
“WORMWOOD!” AMOS SCREECHED, stabbing frantically with the bayonet. “The star’s name was called Worm-wooOOood—!”
Micah’s hand closed around the blade. Amos jerked it away, raised it to stab down again. Micah’s palm and fingers opened, blood pissing from the gash. Micah managed to corral the Reverend’s wrist as he brought the bayonet down; the tip of the knife struck his glass eye; he felt the glass splinter all through his skull bone as the knife scrrrrriiiiitched across its surface.
“Wormwood!” Amos yelped, and laughed like a schoolboy.
Micah knocked the bayonet away. The Reverend was still on top of him. Micah jabbed upward with his thumb; he felt it sink into the Reverend’s eye, which burst with a ripe pop. Vitreous jelly spilled down the back of his hand. The Reverend fell away, shrieking. Micah grabbed his ankle. Oh no. You’re not going anywhere. Micah’s rage was overwhelming. He skinned up Amos Flesher’s thrashing body—“My eye!” he was screaming. “My eye my eye my eye!”—grabbed twin fistfuls of his stinking hair and rammed his skull into the ground again and again.
The Reverend soon went limp. Micah crawled over to the flashlight and shone it on Flesher. He was knocked out, his nose shattered, blood bubbling from his nostrils.
He pinned Ellen in the beam. Her eyelids were fluttering. He crawled over to her.
“Can you stand?”
“Micah?” She blinked, squinting into the light. “Where are we?”
“Nowhere we want to be. Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
Micah retrieved the bayonet. He swept the flashlight around until it fell upon the baby. It lay facing him now, its eyes focused on him with feverish need.
Give that one to me, it said. The trickster.
Yes, Micah thought. You deserve each other.
Micah stalked over to Flesher. He jammed his knee into the Reverend’s spine. Flesher moaned and spat up blood. Micah slit Flesher’s shirt with clinical skill, exposing his pallid back. He pinned him easily to the stone; the Reverend bleated and cried out.
“Father! Don’t let him hurt me!”
But the thing that the Reverend beseeched offered no aid. Its saggy mouth opened and closed as it watched both men with eager, feral eyes.
Micah stabbed the bayonet into the Reverend’s back a few inches above his hips. The Reverend squealed like a stuck pig. Micah then proceeded to hack a trench into Flesher’s back. He set about his task efficiently, the way he had always worked at such grim bodily matters; he grunted with strain as he sawed through flesh, but that sound was drowned out by the Reverend’s screams.
When the trench was deep and long enough, he backed away. He wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand, watching as the Reverend crawled into a corner of the chamber. Micah followed him with the flashlight. Flesher curled fearfully against the wall. His trousers were heavy with blood. His face had become childlike in its fear.
“Please,” he whimpered. “Don’t hurt me anymore. Be merciful.”
“You stay here,” Micah said.
“I will.” The Reverend nodded, exaggerated bobs of his head. “It’s all I ever wanted.”
Micah left him in the vaulted room. He and Ellen traced their way back through the tunnel. At first they could hear the Reverend mewling, and then—like a bully trying to regain some of his old bravado—he began to scream: “I’ll kill you! Kill you all! Wormwoooood!” They ignored him. Micah told himself he would not return to that black box, not for all the money in the world. Not if God himself gave the order.
They came to a fork in the tunnel labyrinth. Micah began to crawl to the left—
“No,” Ellen said. “This way.”
He followed her. Their breath knocked harshly inside the cramped space. Micah tried not to think of the children’s faces lit by the muzzle flash: innocent again in the final reckoning, their expressions a mixture of bewilderment, anguish, and fear.
They reached the tunnel mouth. The ladder hung down the side of the basin. Ellen climbed it with obvious difficulty, her balance wonky from blood loss. Micah followed her up, steadying her when needed. When they reached the top, he pulled the ladder up. He did not want the Reverend following them—or anything else, for that matter.
They made their way through the cleft. There came a soft, moist pattering. The olms—those weird salamander things—were falling from the roof. A disgusting shower of albino amphibian flesh.
“They will not hurt us,” said Micah.
“I know,” Ellen said. “They’re just . . .”
“Gross?”
“That’s the word, Micah.”
They tucked their heads and raced through the falling olms. Micah felt one wriggle down his collar—it felt like a cold, thrashing wad of snot. Ellen made a noise of revulsion as they plopped in her hair. When they had passed their nesting ground, they shook the piggybacking amphibians from their hair and clothing. Ellen picked one off Micah’s shoulder and set it gently on the ground.
“They never hurt anyone,” she reasoned.
A few minutes later, they reached the entrance to the cleft. The track machine was gone. Micah was glad. The forest was already engulfed in flames. The fire was reflected in Ellen’s wide awestruck eyes.
“I don’t do well with fire.”
Micah said, “It will not reach us. The sand.”
She turned to face him. “Your eye.”
She reached up, gingerly fingering his glass eye. It crumbled from his socket at her touch; the Reverend’s blow had shattered it to pieces. He blinked to clear the pebbly shards, which fell to the ground like crushed ice.
“I’ll make you another one, okay?”
“I would
like that.”
“Your hand,” she said.
“Your head,” he said.
By the light of the raging forest fire, he inspected her wound. The ragged cut was a few inches long, just above the ridge of her burn tissue.
He said, “It will leave a scar.”
She waved his concern off. “What’s a scar? They give a person character, don’t you think?”
They stood close but not quite touching, watching the world burn.
18
THE TRACK MACHINE raced down the path, and the flames raged after it.
Nate was shocked by how loud the fire was—it growled and hissed, and when the wind gusted, it made a ripping-screaming sound like some huge beast without a body. The trees didn’t stand a chance: in the side-view mirror he watched the fire eat towering pines in a matter of seconds, sucking them into its molten heart; they went up in sizzling flashes, the trunks glowing white-hot—It’s their souls was Nate’s bizarre thought; that’s the shape of a tree’s soul just as it winks out—before the inferno rolled right over them.
The Englishman steered them down to Little Heaven. The ashen path was wide enough that the machine could fit; any tree in the way got snapped and ground up by the treads. The Englishman glanced at Nate. His face was shiny with sweat.
“You watch how I’m driving, son. I may need you to take the helm soon.”
“Me?”
Nate knew how to pedal a bike, sure, but a tank? He could hear his old playmates crying in the back of the vehicle. He wanted to cry right along with them. They were dead. Everyone’s parents. Even people who had no kids like Doc Lewis and the grouchy cook. His own father. Nate shut his eyes. He could still see the scene inside the chapel: people screaming with blood all down their chests, shrieks and moans, the Reverend standing at the pulpit with his arms in the air as if this was all God’s will.
“What was that thing?” he asked the Englishman.
“What thing are you talking about, precisely?” the Englishman said in the manner of someone who had seen a lot of strange things lately.
“The thing you set on fire.”
The Englishman worked the steering rods. A tree snapped under the treads. “There are details of this world that exist beyond understanding,” he said. “I never would have expected to say such a thing. But there it is. I don’t know what it was, son. Try not to think about it.”
“I can’t help it. I will see it for the rest of my life.”
“I will, too, if it’s any consolation.”
They were nearing Little Heaven. Ebenezer had no intention of driving into it—could you imagine the looks on the kids’ faces at the sight of their dead parents? Better those bodies get burned up, he figured. Better the kids recall their folks in a less traumatic light.
But those things might be lurking in the woods leading back to civilization. No, they would be. He was sure of it. They had let him back in because—well, why wouldn’t they? Another lamb to the slaughter. But he was sure that the slaughterhouse door only swung in one direction, and that they would shortly have to force their way back out.
To that end, Eb would have to be wielding a weapon. Minny, too. It was the only way they’d stand half a chance—and if he were a wagering sort, those were the best odds he’d give them right now.
Little Heaven came into view. Ebenezer drove around the fence, skirting the chapel and the terrible sights it held.
“The woodpile!” Minerva yelled.
He drove to it. When he got out, he saw the fire tearing through the woods to the north. It was advancing with stunning speed: points of flame dancing across the treetops, which swiftly burned down to the forest floor, igniting the browned needles. Christ, he could hear it now—a low, wet, gnashing sound, like a hive of insects chewing and eating as the fire fed on the forest. Minerva hopped down and hauled the burlap tarp off the woodpile.
“We need to wet this!” she said to Eb.
They carried the tarp to the pump. Eb feverishly worked the handle; it took a minor eternity before water began to splash out. They dragged the sopping cover back and wrangled it into the bed of the track machine.
“Get under it!” Minerva instructed the kids.
They did as she said. They all fit underneath the tarp, which would provide at least some protection from the fire that was now bearing hungrily down. Sparks blew all around them, whipped on the wind; they swirled around the track machine like fireflies, fizzling in Eb’s frowsy hair.
Eb clambered back into the cab and angled the machine until it pointed directly down the path leading out of the woods.
“Have you been watching me?” he said to Nate. The boy nodded. “All right, then, come sit where I’m sitting.”
Dutifully, the boy slid over. Eb took Nate’s hands and put them on the steering rods. “You don’t have to adjust these at all, yes? Just keep them steady. Now, you see this pedal? That’s the gas. I want you to put your foot on it.”
Nate pressed down on it with his toe.
“A little harder.”
Nate did. The motor growled menacingly.
“There. That’s the perfect weight. Now put your foot on the brake.” Nate did. Eb slid the transmission into drive. “When I tell you, take your foot off that pedal and put it back on the other one, the gas. We’ll start to move. I want you to keep your foot on the gas pedal just like you did there, okay? And you keep going, no matter what.”
The boy said nothing.
“Okay?”
The boy said, “Okay.”
Ebenezer clapped him on the shoulder. “Good lad.”
He clambered into the bed with Minerva. The fire was nipping at their heels; the skin tightened down his neck, sweat darkening his collar. He glanced back and saw the shimmering wall of flame advancing in a breathtaking wave—breathtaking in a literal sense: the fire ate the surrounding oxygen, leaving him with precious little to fill his own lungs. Ebenezer wondered if it would crash over them that same way—a fiery tidal rip curl picking them up, pushing them forward, charring their bodies to ash before they had even a moment to scream—
He slipped the flamethrower tanks over his shoulders. He could see the things massing ahead. They weren’t going to make it easy.
“You ready?”
Minerva nodded. There was a hardness in her eyes he hadn’t seen before.
“Go,” he told the boy.
With a jerk, the machine trundled forward. A few children cried out under the tarp. Eb lit the flamethrower’s pilot light.
The forest fire was closing in; looking back, he saw a vein of white flame rip out of the woods toward the chapel. It would soon climb its roof and set that mighty cross on fire. After that, the bodies inside would begin to blister and char.
“That’s perfect,” he called down to the boy. “That exact speed.”
They hit the first cut of woods. The things attacked.
It happened quickly. A frenzy of activity. They came in multiple surges. Time fractured, and what Eb recalled came in flashes.
FLASH: A shaggy brutish something lumbering out of the trees, many-limbed and growling. Ebenezer hit it with the flamethrower. It went up in a soaring cone of fire, its legs continuing to saw toward the track machine until Minerva shot it twice with the shotgun, blasting gobs of flaming tissue across the dirt. A fresh horror dodged in from the opposite side: a wet, shimmering, torsional creature of outrageous length, the wiry fibers of its anatomy braided together in some living, livid rope—
FLASH: A pack of smaller things rushing at them, a dozen or more, the size of house cats but much faster; Minerva picked a couple of them off as they advanced, and a few more got squashed under the rumbling treads. But two managed to scale the machine and clamber into the bed; their oily skin was covered in wart-like growths, their mouths studded with needle teeth. The first one attacked Eb’s boot, tearing a chunk from the leather. Minerva kicked it into the corner and blasted it into red hash. She wheeled around to grapple with the second monstrosit
y as—
FLASH: Something swooped down from the sky to land on the hood. An enormous bat-like thing—black wings spread across the whole hood, claws hooking it to the grille. Its body was the size of a big dog, a madcap mishmash of parts. It snapped at the windshield as its claws scrabbled on the hood, trying to climb the glass like some friendly puppy that only wanted to lick the boy’s face. Nate shrieked; the vehicle slowed and he shrank back in the seat, his foot slipping off the gas. Eb pulled the flamethrower’s trigger and got a sad hiss. The fuel tank had run dry. He cut a pistol lose from the slat and shot the thing at point-blank range; it hissed and screeched. He emptied the clip into it, but it clung tenaciously to the hood, scraping its way up the windshield. Minerva turned the shotgun on it. The gun boomed twice, and then the thing was carried off the edge of the track machine, hanging to the hood by the claw on its wing. It shrieked pitifully as the treads caught the flapping edge of its other wing, chewing it underneath the vehicle, where its body crunched with a sickening sound . . .
Then, seemingly moments after it started, it was over. The track machine shunted down the slope, leaving the things behind. They had escaped the kill zone, and nothing appeared to be following. The forest fire was now a faint glow across the bottomlands, though it wouldn’t be long before it caught up to them again.
Eb threw his arms up. “You beautiful bastard, you!” he shouted at Minerva.
The track machine ground to a halt. Ebenezer took a peek under the tarp to make sure the children were okay; then he turned to Minerva with a boyish grin—
She kicked him in the chest and sent him crashing off the tailgate. He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him.
“Get up,” she said coldly, hopping off the tailgate herself.
It felt as though his chest had caved in. He was able to pull in a few shallow heaves and drag himself to his feet. What the hell was she on about? They had survived by the skin of their teeth and now—