Blood Alley th-1

by David Wisehart

  In the middle of the barn sat a 1930s combine harvester-thresher. Part tractor, part thresher. Painted bright red, it looked like a demon. The eyes were glass panels at the front of the cab. The jaws were rotating blades.

  Trevor raised the light and saw Ethan at the controls, behind the windshield glass. The boy had an odd stare.

  What’s wrong with his eyes?

  Dakota stepped into the barn. “Ethan—?”

  The thresher roared to life.

  Startled, Dakota and Trevor jumped back.

  Trevor said, “Stop playing around.”

  Ethan grinned. The thresher lunged forward.

  Straight for Dakota.

  What’s he doing?

  Dakota just stood there, in the path of the moving blades.

  Trevor grabbed her arm. “This way!”

  They ran for the door.

  The thresher chased them. Sharp blades spinning.

  Behind them, Ethan laughed maniacally.

  They were almost to the door when Dakota stumbled.

  Trevor doubled back. Grabbed Dakota’s hand. Pulled her up.

  They ran out the door just in time.

  Once outside, Trevor saw Claire limping towards them. She was halfway between Trevor and the Hummer.

  Behind Trevor, something crashed through the barn. The wall exploded in a shower of splintered wood.

  He turned and saw the thresher bearing down on them.

  Oh, shit.

  “Run!”

  38

  Claire saw Trevor and Dakota run out of the barn door, panic on their faces. Something crashed through the wall of the barn. A giant tractor with spinning blades in front. A combine harvester-thresher.

  She froze.

  Trevor yelled, “Run!”

  Claire ran back for the Hummer. Her leg hurt, but she didn’t care anymore. Her breath quickened. Her vision narrowed. All she could see was the car ahead.

  Get to the car.

  Now.

  Run!

  She had the car keys in her hand. They bit into her palm as she tightened her fists and pumped her arms and kept her legs moving. Claire reached the car and flung open the door and jumped into the front passenger seat, then slammed the door.

  Trevor and Dakota were far behind, on foot, chased by some maniac in a giant tractor with blades that could kill. They needed her help. But what could she do?

  Keys.

  Drive.

  Now!

  Claire moved over into the driver’s seat. Stabbed the key into the ignition. Turned it.

  The engine cranked.

  Wouldn’t start.

  Trevor and Dakota tried to outrun the thresher. It gained on them. The blades spun only inches away. Trevor pulled Dakota to one side. They barely escaped the blades, as the tractor roared past them.

  The thresher came straight for the Hummer. Close enough now for Claire to see the driver.

  Ethan?

  Claire tried again to start the engine.

  Ethan and the thresher were thirty feet away—twenty feet—

  The Hummer started up. Claire stepped on the accelerator. The engine revved, but the car stayed in place.

  What?

  She studied the controls.

  I’m doing it wrong.

  The thresher was ten feet away, and closing.

  The car was in park.

  Claire shifted into reverse.

  The Hummer backed up.

  The thresher smashed into the front end.

  Claire wasn’t wearing her seat belt. The sudden jolt threw her out of her seat. She bumped her head on something hard and landed sprawled on the passenger seat.

  The Hummer spun from the impact.

  Outside, Trevor yelled, “Claire!”

  The car stopped spinning.

  Claire was dazed but shook it off. She saw the thresher turning, with Ethan in the driver’s seat.

  Not Ethan, she realized. The Highwayman.

  Claire climbed back into the driver’s seat. Buckled up.

  I have to stop him.

  The thresher turned back and aimed not at the Hummer this time, but at Trevor and Dakota.

  Claire was too far away. She couldn’t help them. She pressed down on the horn and screamed a warning. “Trevor!”

  Trevor saw the thresher coming for him. Ethan had smashed it into the corner of the Hummer, but he didn’t seem to care about the car anymore. Now Ethan—The Highwayman—was coming for Trevor and Dakota.

  He wants us dead.

  If they could get to the car, they could escape. The thresher was deadly, but it wasn’t fast. Faster than a man on two feet, but slower than the car.

  But they couldn’t get to the car without running past the thresher.

  Too dangerous.

  And the barn was no protection. The thresher had smashed right through the walls.

  Have to get to the car.

  They’d have to run another way—the back way—

  Around the house.

  He stopped Dakota. “No, this way!”

  They ran behind the farmhouse, with the thresher in pursuit.

  Circling the house, Trevor saw an old chicken coop.

  They raced past it.

  The thresher smashed through the chicken coop.

  Wood and old feathers went flying.

  A piece of wood hit Trevor in the leg and almost tripped him up, but he caught himself and kept running.

  Behind him Dakota yelled, “Trevor!”

  He glanced back.

  Dakota was on the ground.

  The back of her head was bleeding. She’d been hit by debris.

  The thresher was going to run Dakota over.

  It was three feet away from her—

  Two feet—

  Trevor wasn’t close enough to reach her in time.

  Nothing he could do but watch.

  39

  Dakota was sprawled on the ground. Something had hit her in the back of her head and knocked her down. She heard a mechanical roar in her ears, growing louder.

  She turned and saw the thresher. It loomed like a giant above her. Coming closer. Without mercy. Steel blades spinning inches away.

  Dakota rolled to one side.

  The thresher blades sliced past her.

  One of the blades caught the sleeve of her sweater.

  Chewing it up.

  The sweater pulled Dakota back toward the sharp cutting edges.

  She heard Trevor shout, “No!”

  Dakota twisted.

  Got her arm out of the sleeve.

  Wriggled out of the sweater as the thresher ate it.

  She fell free of the thresher blades.

  The deadly machine moved on, aiming now for Trevor.

  “Ethan, stop!” she screamed, getting back on her feet. “What are you doing?”

  Dakota saw Trevor run for the back door of the farmhouse. He would be safe inside. He tried the handle, but the door didn’t open.

  Locked, she realized.

  With his elbow Trevor shattered the window, then unlocked the door from the inside.

  The thresher bore down on him.

  Hurry, Trevor!

  He opened the door.

  Ran inside.

  Slammed the door shut behind him.

  Dakota heard another engine behind her.

  It was the Hummer, driven by—

  Claire?

  The Hummer stopped next to Dakota.

  Claire said, “Get in!”

  Trevor paused inside the farmhouse. He’d stepped into some kind of pantry behind the kitchen.

  Safe.

  The noise of the thresher grew louder.

  He looked back through the busted window.

  The harvester-thresher charged right at him.

  It was going to ram the building—

  Oh, shit.

  Trevor backed away from the door.

  The thresher burst through, obliterated the back wall, and tore into the house. Old wood splintered a
way.

  Trevor turned and ran.

  He ran into the kitchen.

  Another wall exploded behind him.

  The thresher emerged from the wreckage.

  It couldn’t be stopped.

  Trevor ran from the kitchen into the living room.

  The thresher came after him.

  Chewing up the floorboards.

  Trevor ran for the front door, his feet pounding on the old ratty rug.

  The thresher caught the rug.

  Pulled it into the blades.

  The rug slipped under Trevor’s feet.

  He fell onto it.

  The rug dragged him toward the spinning blades.

  He rolled away.

  The floor trembled beneath him.

  Above him, he saw a flood of blood-red moonlight as the sky opened up.

  The roof was caving in.

  The house was collapsing all around him.

  Trevor scrambled to his feet

  He ran for the front of the house, the thresher at his heels.

  No time to open the door.

  He aimed for the window.

  And dove through the glass.

  Claire drove around the side of the house, with Dakota in the back seat. Trevor was somewhere inside the house. The thresher machine had smashed right into it. The house quaked with a terrible crashing noise that kept on going.

  “Claire, let me drive,” Dakota said.

  “I got this.”

  She was getting the hang of it. Once the car was in the right gear, it really wasn’t that hard. You just pushed down on the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel and tried really, really hard not to hit anything.

  Don’t screw this up.

  The walls of the old farmhouse were caving in.

  Claire rounded the corner to the front of house. She saw Trevor dive through a window pane as the house imploded behind him.

  He landed on the porch, saw Claire in the Hummer, and ran for her.

  The thresher emerged from the ruins of the house like an angry metal god.

  It chased Trevor over the open ground, gaining on him.

  Claire honked a warning. “Trevor!”

  She drove straight for him.

  Trevor ran straight for the car.

  She was going to hit Trevor.

  Out of the way!

  The spinning thresher blades were inches behind him.

  Trevor jumped up onto the hood of the Hummer.

  Rolled over the roof.

  The Hummer and thresher collided.

  Claire felt herself thrown forward as her face hit the airbag.

  Trevor rolled over the hood of the Hummer and felt the collision under him. He grabbed the sunroof and held on like a rodeo rider. Metal bucked beneath him.

  He saw Ethan launched forward through the shattering windshield of the thresher and into the spinning blades.

  The boy’s body was sliced apart.

  Blood sprayed across the Hummer and into Trevor’s face.

  The blades ground to a stop against Ethan’s skull.

  When it was over, Trevor slid from the roof to the ground, and braced himself against the side of the Hummer. He staggered to the passenger side door and opened it. He saw Claire belted in the driver’s seat, head forward, with an airbag in her face.

  “Claire?” he asked. “You okay?”

  She looked at him. “Yeah.”

  Dakota was in the back seat, moaning in pain.

  They’re both alive.

  The windshield was blocked by two deployed airbags. Trevor got a pocket knife from the glove compartment, and cut away both bags.

  Claire gasped.

  She sees it.

  His girlfriend stared in horror at the thresher.

  Ethan’s face was lodged in the blades, facing out with one eye open.

  It glowed green.

  The glow faded, leaving behind a dead stare.

  Claire re-started the engine.

  Trevor said, “Let me drive.”

  “Okay.” She unbuckled her seatbelt.

  Trevor glanced back at the machine. He saw the Highwayman step out of Ethan’s mangled corpse.

  “No time,” he said, jumping into the passenger seat. “We need to go—now!”

  Claire reversed the car in a cloud of dust and drove the Hummer back onto Blood Alley.

  40

  The Highwayman stood alone beside his old combine harvester. His house was destroyed, but that hardly mattered.

  They took my home eighty years ago.

  Now his only home was the highway.

  The kid in the thresher was dead and diced and of no more use. Three more intruders remained. Having possessed Ethan, the Highwayman now knew who they were: Trevor and Dakota and—

  Claire.

  Claire was something special.

  She looks just like her mother.

  With a tilt of his head, the Highwayman summoned the Revenant. He heard the familiar roar as it emerged from the void beyond the darkness. The Highwayman stood waiting, his back to the ghost car. He raised his arms in front of him, as if gripping an invisible steering wheel. The Revenant drove into the Highwayman’s back. The hood of the car passed through him. The steering wheel passed through him. It settled into his waiting hands as the driver’s seat caught and cradled him.

  The Highwayman took control, and returned to Blood Alley.

  Claire’s hands trembled on the steering wheel. She was shaken by what had just happened. The house was demolished. The car was smashed. But they were alive.

  And Ethan’s dead.

  She fought back the press of tears. She was driving now, and had to stay strong. Claire saw a pair of headlights in her rearview mirror.

  The Highwayman.

  The car behind her looked real—sleek and black and dangerous—but all the ghosts on Blood Alley looked real.

  She accelerated, and the headlights dropped into the distance.

  From the back seat Dakota said with a quivering voice, “You killed him.”

  Trevor moved back to calm his sister. “Dakota—”

  “Ethan’s dead, and she… she…”

  “It wasn’t Ethan who attacked us,” he said. “It was the Highwayman. He made Ethan do those things.”

  “Liar!” Dakota screamed.

  Claire said, “Dakota, I’m so sorry.”

  “Shut up! Shut up! I hate you!”

  Claire felt sharp blows to the back of her head. Dakota was hitting her. A burst of white light filled Claire’s vision and she struggled to stay on the road. The Hummer swerved to the rocky shoulder.

  Trevor grabbed Dakota and held her back.

  Claire corrected the wheel, and returned to the pavement. She checked the mirror. The ghost car was far behind.

  Dakota sobbed into Trevor’s chest.

  “We have to find an exit,” he said.

  “No exit,” Claire said. “The only way off Blood Alley is through it.”

  She saw a semi truck ahead, parked beside the road. Its cargo was a load of live chickens.

  Trevor shouted, “Claire, look!”

  “I see it.”

  The road flew under her. She didn’t slow down.

  “Pull over,” Trevor told her.

  “No time.”

  “He has a radio. We can call out on the CB.”

  Risky.

  Claire eased off the accelerator as she drove past, and glanced at the cab of the truck. She didn’t see a driver.

  “Okay.”

  She hit the brakes.

  The car skidded and fishtailed.

  Trevor yelled, “Foot off the brake!”

  She took her foot off, and managed to regain control. Then slowed to a stop.

  “Hurry,” she said. “He’s right behind us.”

  Trevor opened the door and jumped out.

  When he reached the cab of the semi truck, Trevor stepped up onto the running board and grabbed the hand rails. The truck rocked slightly. The chicken cargo squaw
ked. Trevor peered in the window but saw no one in the seat. He gave the door handle a pull. It was locked.

  Something moved inside the cab—a person in the sleeper berth behind the seat. Trevor tapped on the window glass. The man sat up and stared at Trevor. The truck driver’s hair was a mess. He had hammer in one hand.

  Trevor said, “Hey! You got a CB?”

  The driver stared at Trevor a moment, then waved him away. “Step down.”

  Trevor jumped down from the running board.

  The cab door opened. The man looked out. He wore a coffee-stained wife-beater and a frown. “What’s that you say?”

  “Radio! You got a radio?”

  The Hummer’s horn blared a warning.

  “What’s the trouble?” the truck driver asked.

  Trevor saw the demon-looking headlights racing toward him. It had to be the Highwayman, driving some ghost car.

  He shouted to the truck driver, “Police! Call the police. My sister’s hurt. Her boyfriend was killed. Back at that farmhouse.”

  “Stay there.”

  The truck driver turned on the CB and grabbed the handset.

  The ghost car was coming on fast, aiming straight for the semi truck.

  The Hummer backed toward Trevor, weaving left and right. Claire was having some trouble with reverse.

  Easy, Claire.

  The trucker spoke into his CB radio. “…ten-thirty-three. Over.” He turned to Trevor. “What’s your name, kid?” He held out the handset for Trevor to speak.

  Trevor stepped back onto the running board, and spoke loudly to whoever was on the line. “Trevor. Trevor Watson. We need help!”

  The Highwayman drove his car straight into the back of the semi truck, through the cargo container. Headlights passed through rows and rows of live chickens. Birds flapped and squawked as the ghost car raced through.

  The phantom vehicle penetrated the cab, then disappeared. Trevor saw the Highwayman enter the truck driver’s body. The man’s scream became a death-rattle laugh. The possessed driver turned to Trevor. His eyes glowed green.

  He grabbed Trevor by the throat, wrapped the CB cord around Trevor’s neck, and pulled it tight as a noose.

  41

  The Hummer skidded to a stop.

  Dakota jumped out and saw Trevor fighting with the truck driver. The driver had a cord wrapped around her brother’s neck and was choking him. Trevor’s veins bulged. His face turned blue. He couldn’t breath.