Gloria climbed inside the truck. As Dex revved the engine, she glared at Cullin. “Find a bottle of good champagne, Brewster. The best in town. I’ll be back with my son. Together we can all toast this town a fond farewell.”
Back tires spinning, the two drove to a little-known logging road up the north valley, dust wafting into the air and taking time to settle.
Cullin stood dejected.
Alone again.
“I see you’re still winning popularity contests,” Amos, the old Indian who had told Cullin a bedtime story about Guadalcanal, mocked. He approached Cullin from a nearby alley. “Maybe some sage would hide your conscience better.”
“Get on a bus or get arrested,” Cullin snapped. “I’ll give you to the count of three.”
“But you need me. Who’s left to warn you about the dangers yet to come?”
“One . . .”
“I know Mayor Pike and his men went after the Johnson boy. Tell me where they are. Exactly. It’s important.”
“Two . . .”
Amos sniffed the air. Then he lowered to his knees and felt the gravel. “I told you things are not always as they appear.”
Grabbing handcuffs from his waist, Cullin reached for one of his wrists. “Three!”
His actions would be physically countered.
Amos got to his feet and grabbed the sheriff’s coat collar. “Damn it, listen with your eyes wide open and know what I say is true!”
Bum . . . bum-bum, the distant drums sounded with growing loudness. Bum . . . bum-bum.
“Now, look with your feet,” Amos said, lessening his grip.
Puzzled by the words, Cullin’s gaze slowly fell to the earth. Moving to the beat, the gravel bounced in place.
Bum . . . bum-bum, the drumming went. Bum . . . bum-bum.
“I’ll ask you again,” Amos said firmly. “Where is Mayor Pike and the others?”
“They’re in the northern hills,” Cullin answered, his voice shaky. “Somewhere between the Dawson Mine and the ol’ Krebs Place.”
“Those aren’t hills, my friend. No hills at all. They’re burial mounds full of death, seeking life. The drumbeats are a calling to gather. If you know what’s right in this world, you’ll get your friends out of there. Now!”
The sheriff thought for a moment. He had a hard time understanding. His walkie-talkie would bring clarity.
Click-click-click! came back. Click-click-click!
Ripping the device from his waist, Cullin yelled into the microphone. “Rolly? Tommy? What’s happening?’
“What do you mean? Who is everywhere?”
Oh, Mary, mother of God—no! Stop them! Oh, Mary, mother of God!
How can this be? another voice came back, sometimes talking over the first. Is it real? Rolly? Brewster? How is this happening?
“I’m here!” Cullin insisted. “Keep talking! Where are you?”
Kettle drum–like thunder added to the unearthly beats; sporadic gunfire suddenly lit up the north; and screams challenged the two-way radio’s tiny speaker.
Cullin panicked. “Rolly, Tommy—anyone! Give me your location so I can find you!”
Silence.
Cullen frantically pressed the side button three times and waited for a response.
Again, only silence.
Standing taller than tall, Amos grinned. “Here it comes . . . here it comes . . . ,” he said almost tauntingly. He then paused for effect. “Now, what say you, commander? Do you run? Or do you fight?”
Cullin peered past Amos to the north, then to the west end of town where busses waited, then back to the north. Suddenly spinning around, he sprinted to his office.
“Go get ‘em, Brewster,” Amos called after, “and bring a platoon of soldiers with ya! You’ll need ‘em!”
Inside his office, Cullin yanked open the left-hand drawer of his desk. He grabbed his pistol, checked to see that it was fully loaded, and then shoved it roughly into an empty holster attached to his belt. But before closing the drawer and heading out, he eyed Decoreous’s beaded necklace. It lay there encircling a stapler. After what felt like minutes, Cullin snatched it up, squeezed it within his right hand, and left for the forest.
Help was on the way.
14.4 Dance of the Skeletons
12:50 a.m.
Steven twisted the web, and the earth gave birth.
Underneath Pike and his men, including those positioned a mile to the west, bony fingers pushed through the ground and reached for the stale air. Dark in color, wiggling, grasping, the tiny appendages were connected to bony hands, which were connected to bony arms, which were connected to bony shoulders and upper torsos. The creatures emerged like a time-lapsed movie of corn growth. Numbering one hundred, the skeletons fenced in the living, who scrambled to prepare for a perceived battle. The men clutched their guns tightly and checked for readiness, their shells loaded and forestocks cocked, their muscles—particularly Blaine’s—flexed in case of close-quarter fighting.
Once the first skeleton was fully birthed, Pike, Blaine, and Beckett each responded differently. Beckett backtracked in the direction of Westcreek, his rifle held crossways in front of his person, unsure of how best to proceed. Eyes darting, he tried making sense of the undead.
Is this some kind of trick? he wondered with paranoia. Some kind of cruel joke? Is someone in the treetops pulling strings like a puppeteer?
Glancing up, Beckett saw no reason for the undead movement, and eventually he stumbled backward into the hard trunk of a thick blue spruce. Hyperventilating, he slid downward into a sitting position and muttered incoherently, his weapon pulled close to his shivering chest like the behavior might somehow hide his body.
I’ll close my eyes and everything’ll be gone, he thought. This can’t be happening. It shouldn’t be happening.
Peeking out of one eye brought little comfort.
A number of skeletons closed in, stumbling on shaky, newborn legs; others reached for the miner from below ground; all scraped at his face, tugged at his arms and legs, and nipped at his exposed skin, as if resenting the man’s soft tissue and flowing blood underneath. The sharp pain eventually brought Beckett back to semi-reality.
Spooked, he spastically kicked at anything bone, bellowed with defiance, and fired two bullets, severing the collarbone of one skeleton and shattering the skull of another. But the numbers game would prove to be too much.
Though still alive, ten undead prepared a burial plot for Beckett. Five dug with their claws, trying to approximate height and weight and what it would take to submerge the human. Three from below yanked viciously on his pants and coat. And two jumped atop his head and shoulders, like they were trying to shut an overstuffed suitcase.
Mentally overwhelmed, Beckett curled into a ball, objecting passively to his treatment. “Please don’t,” he whispered. “I mean you no harm. I’m a man of God. Doesn’t that mean something?”
Though saying not a word, one skeleton seemed to understand. Stroking the miner’s facial stubble—kissing his long scar, if lips existed—the undead nodded before pressing Beckett’s face beneath the dirt, its teeth chattering. Beckett’s arms and legs flailed wildly, his skittish words built to a girlish shrill, and his breaths became short. Gradually Beckett succumbed to a lack of oxygen, and his foes slopped clumps of earth over his body like a pack of wolves hiding a large amount of scat.
Pike witnessed the internment. Standing alone just north of the fracas, his long-barreled pistol outstretched, he felt woozy. He didn’t shoot. His focus shifted rapidly from Beckett to Blaine and then back to Beckett. His mind muddled over what to do, and after a few short moments of considering choices, he fled the scene. Gun dropping, he scurried farther to the north like a high school track star, sidestepping calcified, reaching hands and hurtling skeletons that crawled. He was determined to find a safe place to hide, hopefully far away. M
uffled sniveling accompanied his escape.
Staying behind, Blaine fought viciously. To him, the number of dead didn’t matter. On an especially large hill he began shooting his high-powered shotgun in different directions, his facial muscles growing tighter and tighter. Rhythmically drawing shells from either an ammo belt slung over his shoulder or one around his waist—frequently circling in place—Bull’s son let off with a torrent of lead, many shots cracking sternums, snapping ribs, or obliterating femurs. Nothing was exempt from his rage.
“For my father!” he screamed. “Die, you bastards, die!”
The offensive had mixed results: sometimes the salvo resembled a near machine gun, other times a carefully controlled handgun, and still others like a strip of wet firecrackers that struggled to ignite.
Still the enemy moved in, undeterred. Now numbering nearly two hundred—many missing key bones and either flopping about in place, like a convulsing mass, or inching closer and closer to Blaine with a noticeable handicap—they attempted to hog pile the living, hoping their combined weight might stop or slow the man’s fighting ability.
It did. But only for a short while.
Adrenaline raced through Blaine’s body. Wielding his weapon like a bat, the skeletons too close, he swung like a slugger in baseball, crushing spines, pelvises, and kneecaps with each strike. Splinters of bone spit outward, and with each successful swing, the lumberjack gained momentum. Gradually, with the help of his weapon, an invisible barrier extended around his body. Some hits even launched jawbones over treetops.
“Want me?” he taunted. “Try and get me!”
Challenge apparently accepted, the undead moved forcefully forward, smacking at Blaine’s head with feeble forearms or kicking at his shins with brittle toes. The sudden ambush proved effective, prompting the human to drop his gun and parley attacks with only his forearms. The undead smacked and kicked until Blaine changed tactics.
Instead of posturing defensively, he used hand-to-bone combat to reestablish the barrier. He punched at eye sockets and chins. He elbowed shoulders and wrists. He kneed clavicles and lower spines. At one point he even head-butted a skeleton, sending it flatly backward to the ground. Compared to swinging his shotgun, fending off his enemies with bare knuckles took more energy and dancing—without coordination—around and around and in tighter and tighter circles.
But Blaine still felt unstoppable.
“I can take you all on!” he said with almost giddiness. “There’s nothing you can do to hurt me.”
Suddenly a horse’s whinny echoed throughout the forest. Originating from the west, the whinny rose and fell with the presumed pulling of a bridle. Clopping noises accompanied the animal sound, and both the living and the dead paused aggressions, trying to locate the source more precisely. Blaine squinted his eyes. The skeletons aimed one bony temple or the other for better hearing, as if still-intact eardrums needed different positioning, and above-ground-reaching skeletal fingers felt for the disturbance. All sensed the horse getting closer.
Moving forward in succession, giant pine branches gave way and then swished forcefully back into place, some needles falling to the ground. Eventually Blaine and the undead saw it: a horse, six feet tall at the shoulders and without skin, carrying an equally meatless Indian warrior adorned in a decrepit feather headdress, a tarnished leather vest, and a torn loincloth. In the warrior’s left hand, he held a long spear.
Clop . . . clop . . . clop. The horse carefully stepped on stones and small pebble beds for firm footing. Clop . . . clop . . . clop.
Now only a short distance away, the rider yanked back on a frayed rope, and the mare reared up on its hind legs and whinnied even louder. When the horse settled back down, the warrior lowered and aimed his spear, exposing a sharp tip.
The hairs on the back of the lumberjack’s neck stood straight up, his heart rate increased, and his breathing became choppy. Anticipating a charge, he searched for an escape route. But dozens of mindless skeletons were in the way, so he desperately grabbed for a shotgun shell and tried loading his gun, hoping to rekill the undead rider.
The warrior’s mount huffed, scratched the ground with one of its front hooves, and started to run. At first the pace was much like a trot. But quickly—with the help of heel kicks from the warrior into its skeletal sides—the horse achieved a gallop.
Blaine brought his gun to eye level, inadvertently slamming the wooden stock into his neck on the way to his right shoulder. BOOM! The lead missed the duo.
He reloaded.
An even shorter distance away, the gallop intensified.
BOOM! Blaine’s second shot passed through the rider.
Finally, the horse bolted to a full sprint, unwittingly trampling a sea of standing undead. At the same time, the warrior dropped to one side like a rodeo star, squeezing the spear while trying to accurately position the point.
Click. Blaine’s third shot never happened, the gun jamming. Gasping, catatonic with fear, his pectorals strained. He could only watch the coming impact. And it came. Hard.
SHLOOP! The spear sliced into Blaine’s chest like a toothpick through soft cheese, penetrating his stomach and sticking out his back. The momentum was so great that the skeletons behind the lumberjack fell over in a wave pattern.
Mouth agape, Blaine tried to speak, but only a gurgle emerged. Hands gripping the spear shaft, he attempted to dislodge the weapon; it wouldn’t budge. He moaned. He winced repeatedly. Eyes narrowed, staring up at the rider, he tried to nonverbally scold, but the warrior refused to care.
Falling to his knees, now looking upon the rider’s blank face with anguish, Blaine had a queer series of thoughts: What would my father think of this situation? What would he say about being bested by an Indian—a dead one, at that? Would he be ashamed? Or might he have understood, considering my attempt at valor?
The lumberjack repeatedly bounced his forehead off the spear, slipping into and out of life. In the mental fog that followed, he relived a prominent moment in time. A good memory. A terrible memory.
On his eighteenth birthday, drinking too much beer at the Westcreek Café with his father, the two got thrown out by three brawny bouncers. After a futile scuffle, they stumbled through the dark forest, but not to home, where beds were ready for their weary heads, but to a place in Wasin. Bull insisted upon it. As Blaine recalled, his father was determined to test his son’s manhood.
Standing out of sight in a grove of trees near the village, scanning the dimly lit grounds to ensure that everyone was asleep, Bull and Blaine made violent plans. Coast clear, the drunkards crept silently to a nearby shanti and entered a flimsy door of breakaway plywood about to fall off its hinges. Inside, they could hear snoring. Feeling around the dark room, the two grabbed for a skinny Indian lying on a cot, covering his mouth so he wouldn’t scream. Both dragged the man roughly out the door to a small grove of birch trees away from Wasin where the moonlight shined brightly.
“He’s all yours!” Bull snarled, stepping back. “Take him, son! Take him!”
Blaine remembered balling one of his fists and kneeling close to the now-cowering Native no older than himself. With the other hand he grabbed the man’s nightshirt near the neck. But as he gnashed his teeth and reared back his fist, preparing to strike, the man begged for mercy, both verbally and through mercy-seeking eyes. At the time, the behavior so surprised Blaine that he softened his fist, unable to disengage from the Indian’s humanness. He remembered how the man’s tears dripped onto his other hand; they almost stung.
“I told you to take him!” Bull raged, yanking his son to a stand, slapping his face. “You better learn: it’s either us or them!”
Turning abruptly, Bull modeled what was expected. Getting on top of the still-prone Indian, he pummeled him until the crying stopped and the brown eyes closed.
Blaine watched. Numbly.
Back in the present, the lumberjack could no longer exist between the two worlds. Expelling a last breath, he slumped over the spear and wen
t to sleep.
At the same moment, Steven awoke from his trance, letting go of the wet earth, quieting his chants and reconnecting with the forest. He surveyed the human and skeletal carnage, and he liked it. The battle was won.
But a question remained: Where was Mayor Roland Pike?
To the north, he could hear the faint sound of sticks snapping. The young guardian smiled. “So . . . a criminal returns to the scene of a crime.”
14.5 An Earie and Deerie Duet
1:50 a.m.
A war still waged.
Not far from the clearing and the Great Rock, Tommy, Will, Alfred, and Paul were having greater success fending off the skeletal uprising. At least initially. Firing pistols and rifles atop a small hill, each fussed and fought, shooting anything dead. Like Pike’s group to the east, they were able to hold off or dismember many skeletons; unlike Pike’s group, the enemy here discovered weapons.
A missile offensive developed. Skeletons away from the front line scratched into the earth for buried bows and arrows, preparing each to fire, and from a worm’s perspective this was no easy task. Many of the weapons from long ago were broken or rotten or simply turned to dust upon contact. Pulling back on the often-flimsy bow strings, then letting go, most of the projectiles nose-dived into the ground a few feet forward, shattered, or flew sideways. But for those that hit their mark—for those that stuck into the living—the pain was unrelenting.
Will took the first arrow. Surprising him, it stuck with a dull thud into the top part of his stomach. The ninety-year-old gagged and struggled to swallow. Falling backward into a sitting position with a yelp, he felt for the damage, the arrow crumbling around the notch and shaft. Only the lower stalk and point remained. He could remove neither with his fingers. Rapidly, three more arrows followed, two hitting Will’s left shoulder and one, his neck. Flopping his head back, feeling beaten, he unleashed with a torrent of expletives related to Redskins and how they cheated whites and stole the valley. He could feel death drawing near.
Becoming numb and weightless, his gray eyes no longer able to focus, the once-successful mill owner had an out-of-body experience. He left the deep forest and magically appeared within his home’s tiny kitchen. There at a small table sat his wife, stirring milk into coffee. To her left sat a cold plate of wild rice hotdish, untouched from the supper hour. A wooden cuckoo clock on a far wall ticked away time in the early morning. Loudly.
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