Our War with Molly Nayfack

by Chris Capps

  Everyone stopped there for a moment, watching the town's supplies turn black and curl into oblivion under the thick rolling inferno inside the building. Soon the support struts at the top of the building were bending, weakened by the expansion of the flames and the tremendous weight of the chopper.

  When the section of roof beneath the helicopter collapsed near the back of the building, flames and heat shot out to the entrance. Everyone just stopped and stared.

  Chance turned slowly, seeing Rind standing there beside him. He couldn't hear Rind screaming, but he did feel it when the Sherriff grabbed his collar and started punching him.

  Thud.

  Spittle frothed and curled in long acrobatic strings from the Sherriff's teeth as the screams continued, but the flames were crackling something in the warehouse very loudly, and other men were screaming to grab hoses that had never arrived. Chance could feel his body going limp in the fugue he was in. He faintly tried to put his hand over his face, but the Sherriff shook him like a rag doll, throwing another fist into his jaw, knocking it to the side. And screaming. Then he was on the ground.

  Jessica rushed forward, herself screaming. Chance tried to crawl away, but when he looked up he saw the thing with his face again, and stopped. Had he been in that position when he fell? Its hand was out, reaching toward Chance, blood curling between fingers. Something about it pulled Chance back to reality, and he rolled onto his back just in time to see the Sherriff slam his fist into Jessica's face.

  She reeled backward, cascading against the wall of the warehouse. The Sherriff leaned down, hurling incoherent shouts down at her. Jessica had pulled her pistol. Chance looked back behind him at the thing lying at the entrance, but all he saw were flames snapping and hissing at a primordial black shape. He staggered to his feet to get away from the fire, a ringing in his ears following him as he wobbled back and forth.

  Jessica was shouting with both hands on her gun now, pointing it down at the Sherriff. Rind was glaring up on his knees with his hands behind his head and murder in his eyes. She reached down and grabbed Chance by the shirt collar, pulling him up, and dragged him into the fog.

  They both ran on unsteady legs for a time, racing through the fog past familiar houses. With his blurred vision, Cooper thought he spotted the rear half of a wrecked car leaking fuel from the Forbin house. He saw a broken pink flamingo lying headless in the yard of Artie Wilcox, a bent and twisted bicycle leaning with its rear wheel up and spinning against the wall of the house next door.

  He huffed, looking behind him and seeing that Jessica wasn't there. He had escaped.

  But he was alone. He thought about the helicopter coasting over the warehouse, and wondered what Molly had done to get that thing with his face to cooperate.

  Chapter 15

  Melissa Novak was sitting in the basement staring at the rusted metal water heater on the far side of the room. It was old, weathered like the hull of a battered and ancient ship. The only new part of it was the gauge. The needle now rested well into the forbidden territory of the heater's red warning letters. It was too hot in there, too pressurized for the old bucket to handle.

  She hadn't been near a window in hours, but had spent the evening watching the light from upstairs trail up the side of the wall and disappear. There was one light in the basement, a single solitary bulb hanging at the center of the room, swaying and dancing with a moth that flung itself against the hot glass surface. Upstairs the old cuckoo clock came to life and sang out its terse midnight tune.

  In her hand Melissa had a socket wrench.

  Footsteps reached the front door, passing up them gracefully and opening the unlocked door into the living room. Melissa leaned back now, hearing the footsteps creak across the ceiling and over to her bedroom. Chattering voices were speaking over one another, singing, then abruptly stopping in a stream of consciousness Melissa couldn't follow. They were at her bedroom door, talking between them.

  She rose from the chair quietly. It creaked, but the noise wouldn't be enough to reach the ears upstairs. How many were up there? She fastened the end of the ratchet to the gas line, calmly ratcheting the heater's gas control open. The flames at the base of the heater flared outward, spilling out the side of the thin chicken wire fence wrapped around its base. They were yellow, snaking up the side of the heater and scorching long black fingers in what little paint still clung to its base. The needle on the dial was moving further into the forbidden red territory. Danger. 250 PSI. 275 PSI.

  By 300 PSI, Melissa could hear the door to her bedroom close. The Mollys were in her room. They were surrounding her bed, singing some song she had never heard, ultimately moved and convinced of its significance. Of that, Melissa had no doubt. She walked up the wooden stairs, not worried that they would hear the creaking sound.

  Their rancorous singing was filling the upstairs, a meaningless benediction, maybe. Or maybe a sign of respect. She didn't know. With bare feet she crept calmly down the carpet, rehearsing the process in her mind. First step, lock the door. Then go to the good china cabinet. Lock the door first, no matter how much comfort it would bring her to grab that shotgun.

  The last two steps she jogged, reaching over the door and pulling the key from her pocket. She locked it quietly, and none too soon. The Mollys on the other side had apparently just pulled her sheets back, revealed that the shape they had been singing their lullaby to had been a scarecrow. The crows knew how to distinguish a man from a bag of sticks and straw. Every single one.

  "But throw a sheet over it, and someone's bound to make a mistake," Melissa said to herself as the doorknob jostled once.

  "She's locked us in," she heard from the other side. The voice called into the hallway, "Melissa, we've given you an opportunity to go peacefully. We're here to take your pain away."

  "I changed my mind," Melissa said bracing her shoulder to the china cabinet. It had been a good choice, to lock the door first. The cabinet tilted, rather than gliding smoothly across the floor the way she had imagined. It buckled on wobbling legs and then tilted forward, smashing against the bedroom door, spilling priceless antique plates and cups. A thick knife on the other side stabbed through the door. Feet were kicking it. From here they would start to panic.

  Melissa reached for the shotgun hanging along the wall where the China cabinet had been. Once upon a time after work, her uncle had told her a story about an old broken water heater under too much pressure. The flames at the bottom were turned up too high, and they weakened the bottom end of the device.

  Do you know how much pressure is in one of those things?

  With the maelstrom growing inside, pretty soon the rusted bottom was the first thing to go, he had said. The steam shot out the bottom like a rocket. She still remembered the way he had laughed at the story. Luckily no one was in the house when it happened, so no one got hurt.

  But her uncle did like to tell stories. He lied quite a bit. But that story had followed her. It had made her nervous every time she went to sleep at night. Part of the reason she didn't like this house was the water heater was exactly where she needed it right now, assuming the story was true. It was directly beneath the bedroom.

  But what if it was a lie? Melissa cocked the shotgun as she heard hands punch at the shutters that had been nailed shut leading outside. Panic was gripping the group. What if it was a lie? They'd get out. Why not shoot through the door now? She imagined massive holes opening up the door. She would get one of them for sure. But how many more were there? She backed against the wall, breathing. No. That wouldn't get them all.

  She backed out the hallway and felt a hand on her shoulder.

  "You're not getting out of this alive, Melissa," one of the things said from the darkened living room. She spun around, raising the shotgun and waited. Here she was now, staring it dead in the eyes, the face of a girl she had known for years, had mourned when she disappeared. Molly didn't look violent. She looked friendly. Except for the knife in her hand she looked like the same sweet girl who had
walked into those woods all those years ago. So frightened, Melissa had cried, so alone.

  Melissa remembered her husband. They had worked to kill him quickly, but the fire they set at the windmill house hadn't been intended for a quick death.

  She had to remember that. The Mollys weren't ultimately merciful.

  They wanted Chance Cooper dead, and if they put Melissa Novak through the torturous death of burning alive, that was a decision they had already made. She felt the grip and the trigger in her hand, raised it up and zeroed it in on Molly.

  "Open the door, Melissa," Molly said, perking her eyebrows in a perfect facsimile of compassion as she held out her hand, "Open the door and we'll sing you a song and you'll just go to sleep. We know how to make death pleasant."

  "And we know," another face said, emerging from the hallway, "How to make it unpleasant."

  Melissa's uncle was always telling lies. Once when she had stolen one of his cigarettes he had glared at her, telling her he had always known she was rotten. He said he felt sorry for the mosquitoes that might bite her and get her poison into them.

  She whirled between the Mollys, backing into a corner. Two now. She could get one, but not both. She sat down hard, the old rocking chair creaking beneath her as she trembled and dropped the shotgun. Melissa pursed her wrinkled lips, eyes drifting to a pack of home filtered cigarettes to her right. With shaking fingers she picked up the pack.

  "It's alright, my dears!" one of the Mollys called to the door, "She's come back to us!"

  "It was the right thing to do," the other one said pulling a lighter from her pocket and reaching forward. She flicked it, letting the paper tube on Melissa's lips crackle and smoke. She inhaled deeply, nodding. The second Molly closed the lighter, and said, "You have a beautiful voice, Melissa. I didn't want to ruin it by hearing you scream."

  "It's not good for much anymore, but thank you," Melissa said, "I like it. It suits me."

  "On your list of priorities, what's more important? Quick or painless? We like you, Melissa."

  "We're good at both."

  "We're good at all four."

  Melissa took another drag, pulling the ember up toward her knuckles as she breathed ghosts into the corner of her living room.

  "My uncle once told me he had a dog. When he was young. The dog's name was Walker. He walked that damn thing from sunrise to sunset. Walked it all over."

  "She's trying to delay us."

  Melissa continued,

  "You'll like this one. He would walk it up and down the street Walk it down to the lake to go fishing. The dog would walk all around in circles while he fished, and when he went home and went to bed it would walk through the night, sniffing the air as it went. It never stopped."

  "Open this door, Melissa!" the voices called out over one another from the other room.

  "One day he took it to the doctor, and as it wagged its tail and walked around the office sniffing everything, he tried to get it to stand still. But it wouldn't. It kept walking between the vet and my uncle, walking and sniffing. My uncle asked what was wrong with it. Asked if there was anything he could do to get it to stop walking all the time. And you know what the vet told him?"

  For a second Melissa thought the house had been struck by lightning. It was a sudden cackling boom that welled up from the basement, through the bedroom, and frightened the dust out of the cracks in her ceiling.

  In that moment everyone moved. The two Mollys standing across from her leapt backward, and Melissa reached down and grabbed the shotgun. For the first shot their eyes were on the door now fuming with steam through tremendous holes that had been blown out of it. She pulled the trigger, cocked it as the first Molly was blasted backward. Fired again. The second one looked at her for only a split second before being knocked off its feet, a hole opening up at its solar plexus. She cocked the shotgun. Then she breathed.

  There was a ringing in Melissa's ears. One that she was certain would follow her to her grave. The shaking crack of the water heater rocketing up through her bedroom had struck her bones like a cage of tuning forks, numbing her hands and face.

  She trembled, rising to her feet and cocking the shotgun again, sending an unspent cartridge cascading down to the dusty carpet. She reached down, realizing that the cigarette had been ripped from her wrinkled lips and pulled one last drag out of it before stubbing it into her ashtray. The two Mollys at her feet were inert, like they had never moved a day in their lives. They looked so real to her. She rose, letting the rocking chair move back and forth, reminiscing of kinder days in her wake.

  Stepping over the bodies, she looked one last time into the broken doorway before turning and walking out of her house that last time. No one was coming outside of their houses to applaud her survival. They were either gone or locked away for the night. No one was coming out to check on her now. If she could hear, she would have listened for the sounds of patrol cars and fire engines, but she couldn't. And there were none to be heard anyway. She felt herself say the words to the ancient stillness of night, but didn't hear them,

  "The vet said nothing's wrong. That's just how dogs are."

  ***

  When the cannon sound of the explosion reached the police station, Jessica was sitting in the waiting room holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand. The lights were still on. Molly hadn't found a way to make that stop yet. If she got the windmills, they might be able to find a way to get the wood burning power station down by the lumber mill up and running - in a week or so. With their resources drained, it was difficult to imagine how successful that would be. She sipped the coffee, long itching lines swirling around her heavy eyelids. She rubbed the back of her hand across her face, feeling the grit and dirt that had been kicked up by the warehouse still clinging to her.

  No more warehouse. No more food. Everything they needed had been in that building. Without it, the crisis they had been hoping to postpone through careful planning and rationing had just awoken. It reared its head even now, glaring at her from the cup of coffee she slowly sipped. No more. No more anything.

  If it had been a perfectly peaceful time, this would have been a problem. With the majority of the town's stockpile of medical supplies and chemicals for crafting more medicine either locked up in the warehouse or at the university building, they were living on borrowed time. But they always had been. It was a slowly dwindling supply anyway. Molly had just eaten the last of it in that fireball.

  "Pretty smart of her, using that helicopter to burn out the inside of the warehouse," a voice said from the reception desk. It was Frankie. He leaned forward, bathed in the lonely light of a banker's lamp, "Drink that coffee slowly. Enjoy it. That's the last we've got in the station."

  She looked down at her cup, staring into the twin bubbles dancing therein. Those bubbles reminded her of prom duty, overlooking the handful of students dancing and necking by the bleachers. Two students, good kids whose names she had never had to memorize stuck out in her mind. Were they still alive?

  She set down the cup, putting it on the reception table by Frankie.

  "I won't hog it," she said, "Gimme your cup."

  Frankie set his mug down on the desk, and she poured half of the contents of her cup into it. Frankie smirked, tipping his mug to her before swallowing his share in a single gulp. After he set it down and turned back to his papers he said,

  "You can't wait out here all night. Pretty soon you're going to have to confront Rind about what happened earlier."

  "What happened earlier?" she asked, distant now as vaulted black windows glared down on the barren reception area, "What the hell was that?"

  "He was beating Cooper and you pulled him away," Frankie said scratching at the desk with the tip of his pencil, "But you pissed him off pretty bad."

  "I'm gonna be digging ditches after this," Jessica said smirking and pouring the last of her coffee into Frankie's cup. She tilted the cup back over her mouth and let the last drop fall cold and dead on her tongue. Wrapping her hand aroun
d the cup, she crumpled it and tossed it onto the front desk, "Keep that."

  "You're keeping your gun, right?" Frankie said, pulling his book from the desk.

  "Yeah," Jessica said.

  She wandered to the Sherriff's office and tapped on the door.

  "Get in here."

  He was sitting behind the desk, with only a green lamp illuminating the sparse scene. He had apparently gone through and systematically grabbed the various hanging ornaments crowding the wall and thrown them into boxes. The walls hung barren now, with long seams and dustless shadows where picture frames had once been. The boxes were arranged in the corner, stacked single file in a column. He pointed at the chair sitting across from his desk. She sat down.

  Of the things that had been left behind, the old clock on the far wall was still there, along with a picture of Rind and Sugarhill holding up a small plastic bowling trophy. They were pointing at it and grinning in the picture. Second place. Rind wasn't smiling now. The clock kept ticking, tapping the rhythm of time in the background as she waited. And he let her wait, staring with red hot eyes at her.

  "If you're going to fire me, do it," Jessica said at last, trying to lean back and look as though she could control her voice. He kept staring, and she filled the silence, "And if you're going to demote me, then you just go ahead and see how this place runs without me."

  "I'm not firing you," he said as footsteps down the hallway approached. They were slow, timid footsteps. Jessica looked back and saw mayor Sugarhill open the door and walk in. Rind continued, "You're an investment of time, Jessica."

  "Paul," Sugarhill said huffing as he pulled the other chair in front of the Sherriff's desk out, "You mind telling me why I have to walk through the streets unaccompanied now? You don't have to guard the warehouse anymore so that should free up some men for you."