by Hunter Shea
The beast grunted and its eyes went wide with shock. And then it was gone. I looked up to see Angus bury his machete in the back of the wild man that was clawing at Teta.
The car came to a sudden, awful stop and we were all thrown from it like from an untamed bronco. I rolled to a breathless stop. Angus slammed into me. Teta skidded on his back.
My head and side where Angus had collided with me barked with agony. But there was something else far more alarming.
The night was suddenly very still. All I could hear was the sound of our ragged breathing. When my eyes came back into focus, I saw that Matthias was still in the car. His head was bleeding. He was slumped on the front dashboard.
“My fucking sombrero,” Teta moaned, holding the mangled thing in his hand. It was ripped in two.
“You’re not going to need it where we’re going,” Angus said.
I looked around and if I’d been a cat I would have watched all nine lives scatter into the night.
We were surrounded.
The moonglow threw light over row upon row of the hell-bent, hairy beasts that had formed a tight circle around us. Hundreds of pairs of gleaming, crimson eyes bore into us with something this side of hate.
Even if we’d each had a Gatling gun, I didn’t like our odds.
We rose slowly to our feet. I felt that if we made a wrong move, the madness and killing would burst forth. The big question was, what constituted a right move?
The car groaned, then spluttered.
“Gentlemen, it appears my Buffum is experiencing some major difficulties,” Matthias said, trying to crank it back to life. His head wobbled a bit and one eye was clouded with blood.
Taking slow, tentative steps, Teta, Angus and I made our way to the car. Our machetes were scattered along the ground. I questioned whether I should even pick one up, lest that be the thing that set the wild men on us, but figured I’d rather die with a weapon in my hand than a regret in my mind.
Matthias tried to get the car started a few more times, but each time the engine coughed and went silent. To my surprise, I saw that we were on the outskirts of the tree line that surrounded the hills.
If we could somehow make it into the trees, there was a chance we could lose them. It was a chance slimmer than a bank note, but it was better than staying where we were.
“Angus,” I whispered from the corner of my mouth, “you’re a big man, but can you run?”
His bald head gave a solemn nod.
“You see those trees? I say we head for them as fast as we can. You lead and Teta and I will take everything out around us, with Matthias keeping our backs clear.”
Teta stuffed the remains of his sombrero in his waistband and said, “You’ve gone off the deep end, jefe. Lucky for you, I have too.”
The beasts regarded us like a four-course meal, but they didn’t make a move. Their combined smell was stronger than ten tons of dynamite. “Matthias, toss us the guns.”
We caught them and checked the chambers. Both needed reloading.
“When I count to three, I need you to run out of the car, grab this machete and stick to us. With Angus blocking, we’re going to make for the woods. It’s not a far shot from here to the mine. If anything, we can get to higher ground and try to defend ourselves.”
“That’s suicide,” he said.
“It ain’t if something else kills you,” I reminded him. “God will forgive you.”
He considered it, looking round at the angry, half-human faces that stood waiting like a living bear trap.
“Okay,” he said.
I held up a finger. “One.”
Angus turned to face the trees. Teta and I closed in on his hulking frame. “Two.”
I thumbed the hammer back on the Winchester. I’d have to use the barrel to bash the creatures after I ran out of ammo.
“Th—”
The wild men behind the car swarmed like bees on a hive.
Matthias heard them before turning to face their savagery and screamed, “I’m stuck!” He pulled at his leg but he couldn’t get out of the car.
The other wild men began their advance, taking up their chilling howls and screeches. Before I could get off a single shot, they descended on the car and Matthias. There were so many it transformed into a hairy, rocking mound.
Angus shouted for Matthias. But he was gone.
Chapter Forty
As much as I hated to admit it, there was no saving the so-called reverend. I pushed myself into the big man’s back and shouted, “It’s too late! Go!”
Angus roared with pain and red-hot anger that equaled the cry of any of the wild men. He moved forward like a locomotive on full steam. Teta and I had to push hard to keep up. Angus squared his shoulders and decimated everything he came in contact with. We scooped up the fallen blades.
As we shot and smashed our way to the tree line, the wild men took their pounds of flesh. Swinging my rifle into the head of one, my elbow was caught by a row of teeth that tore a ragged line through my flesh, bouncing off the bone. The butt of the rifle connected with its temple and the spray of my blood mingled with the blast of smoke that the beast became.
To his credit, Angus never slowed down, nor did he stop bellowing like a wounded animal. At one point my face rubbed against his back and came away wet with his blood.
The air burned with the smells of gunpowder, burned hair, blood and vile smoke. The wild men converged on us and tried to slow us down, but Angus was not to be denied.
I slipped my Colt out of my holster and blasted a couple of the wild men in the face – tanned faces that looked much too human. I’d worked alongside big, hairy men who looked more like animals than these creatures.
“Jesus, that hurt!” Teta pulled his hand from the bloody maw of one of the beasts. I put a bullet down its throat and it burst into a black mist.
We ran and shot and hacked with the machetes and cavalry sword. The wild men screeched so loud my ears were ringing.
“Trees!” Teta cried.
Sure enough, they were just a handful of yards away. We had broken through the final row of the wild-man ranks and now it was just us and the rows of evergreens. Hundreds of the creatures were at our backs.
I was mad as hell and wanted nothing more than a ring of cannons to blast every last one of them away. If Selma weren’t somewhere in the mines, I might have stopped to face them, taking out as many as I could until my strength was no more and they overtook me. Dried leaves and brown pine needles crunched as we made our way into the trees, winding around trunks, trying not to get tripped up. The moon couldn’t penetrate the thick canopy and it was hard to see more than two feet in front of our faces.
We ran until our lungs burned. It was an uphill climb and we sounded like a trio of asthmatics.
I was the first to stumble. I don’t know if my boot caught on something or if my legs just gave out. I skidded onto my hands and knees. My stomach heaved as I gulped the cool night air. Teta and Angus stopped next to me. Each went down on one knee.
“You all right?” Teta asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just need to catch my breath.”
Pausing our flight gave us a moment to listen. There were no sounds of pursuit. Because of the drought, every step in the small forest was a symphony of noise. Now there was nothing. Not even the sound of crickets.
Teta said, “I think we lost them. Thank God. I’m so beat up inside every time I breathe in my ribs feel like they’re going to snap.”
I looked down into the dark alleys between the trees, imagining all those wild men crouched behind them, waiting. Any minute, I’d see a thousand burning red eyes, hovering like demonic fireflies.
“They let us lose them,” Angus said.
He was a man of few words, but when he spoke there was an undeniable truth behind them.
“You�
�re right, they did. How could the three of us outrun creatures that were capable of keeping up with a speeding car? We’ve been herded here. And I don’t think it’s by accident that we’ve been separated from the car,” I said.
“Or my spirit chest,” Angus added. He scooped up some leaves and used them to sop up the blood that covered most of his face, neck and arms. His shirt was torn in so many places it was a miracle it even stayed on. He had taken a beating, running through those wild men.
They wanted us to be here, alive, but not unhurt.
My own scratches felt like someone had poured salt in the wounds. Amazing how something made of smoke could inflict so much damage.
I struggled to get up and put a hand on Angus’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about Matthias.” He closed his eyes and went silent.
From our vantage point, we couldn’t see the hills yet, but I knew we were close. There was only one way to go, and that was up. I patted my shirt pocket to see how many bullets I had left for the Winchester.
“You got any shells for the shotgun?” I asked Teta.
“Enough. When they run out, it’ll make a good club.”
“Next time we decide to go down shit creek, remind me to bring a paddle…and a boat,” I said.
My thighs twitched and burned when I attempted to take a few uphill strides. My blood pulsed through every part of my body, increasing the pain in the deep gouges the wild men had painted on me. My knees shook, and I had to lower myself before I collapsed.
“Maybe we should rest a bit,” I said, squinting my eyes to shut out the agony that had taken hold of me.
I was so close to Selma I wanted to press on, but my body was betraying me. I called out to her in my mind, praying she would know I was near and would guide me to her.
“Selma,” I whispered.
When I looked over, Teta and Angus were asleep, and for a moment, I wondered if they’d died. I watched them, straining against the dark, and saw the slow rise and fall of their chests. They were in a deep, unnatural sleep.
My skull felt like it was filled with cotton and my eyelids kept dropping of their own accord. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, sleep was going to drag me under. My last thought was that there was poison in the wild men’s sharp nails and teeth and we were going to rot up here.
At least there were no buzzards to peck away at our eyes and flesh.
* * *
“Nat.”
I struggled to get out of a dream that was already fading into nothing. “Nat. Wake up.”
My eyes snapped open. A grizzled face leered down at me, its white beard undulating in the wind. I rolled away, scrambling to get to my feet.
My heel clipped Angus’s side and I fell over him. Angus sat up on his elbows, groggy and confused and unhappy that someone had dropped onto him.
I raised my hands. “It’s only me, Angus.”
I looked over to where I’d been sleeping. There was nothing. Teta was still asleep down where my feet had been. “Franklin?”
There was no sign of the man. He had been standing over me, calling my name. He couldn’t have run away without making a sound. “Franklin!”
Teta bolted awake and drew his pistol. “What happened?”
“I…I think I saw Selma’s brother-in-law,” I said, unsure of my own senses.
“Do you know where he went?”
I looked all around. “No. One second he was calling my name, the next he was gone.”
“That sounds like Franklin.”
I was reluctant to say what I felt, but I knew Teta wouldn’t laugh it off. “He’s not alive.”
“What do you mean, he’s not alive?”
“I get the feeling we’ve never seen him alive. When I looked at his face just now, it was different.”
“I don’t understand.” Teta reholstered his gun and rubbed his eyes.
“I saw his face, plain as day. But I could also see through his face, right to the stars above him.”
“Like a ghost?”
I swallowed hard. Everything I’d come across since entering Hecla was counter to the core of my beliefs. It’s not easy for a man half a century old to admit he’s been wrong about everything.
“Yeah.”
“What did he want?”
“For me to get up.”
“That’s all?”
“He didn’t exactly stay around long enough to share some jerky and conversate.”
“Spirit guide,” Angus said. “Hard to know if they’re good or bad. You usually don’t find out until it’s too late.”
“Spirit guide? Like what the Indians talk about?” I said. Angus slowly shook his head. “Not really.”
It didn’t look like he planned to expand on things, so I dusted myself off and did a quick internal inspection of my body. I was still sore as hell, but the rest had done me some good. The blood had dried my shirt to my cuts and when I stretched, the fabric pulled free with tiny ripping sounds. If I wasn’t wide awake when I saw Franklin, I was now.
“So what are we to make of Franklin being a spirit guide?” I asked. Angus shrugged his shoulders and walked off to relieve himself.
“He’s the expert?” Teta said, his jaw working out some tension.
“He has special gifts, remember. Matthias is the expert, I think.”
If I was right, we were getting closer to the evil source of Hecla’s power and were at an immense handicap. That must have been why the wild men focused on Matthias and gave us a halfhearted chase through the trees.
When Angus came back, I suggested we make our way up the face of the cliffs and find one of the mine access points. “Teta and I will take the lead, Angus.” I didn’t want him in front. If he slipped, he would take us down like a boulder in a landslide.
It was still dark but I had no idea what time of day it actually was. There wasn’t a bird in the sky, critter on the floor or insect on the wind. It was like being locked in a room with a lone window facing the moon. At least the breeze never let up. It was comforting to know at least something worked right out here.
Our boots made quite the racket as we emerged from the tree line and crunched the hard gravel around the hills’ base. I saw what looked like a darkened opening up and to our left.
A winding road had been cut into the rock that circled the hills, leading to each of the shaft openings. We’d seen it when we’d done our earlier recon during the day.
“I’ll bet we’re expected to take the road,” I said to Teta.
“All the more reason not to use it. If we’re lucky, no one, or no thing, thinks we’ll climb straight up. Less surprises for us, you think?”
“What I think and a dime is worth ten cents. But I do agree with you. It doesn’t seem so steep and it looks like there are a lot of hand- and footholds. I’m pretty sure we can make it up and still hold on to the guns.”
“I sure wish we still had one of those lamps. It’s going to be hard to shoot what we can’t see.”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Since you’re the younger, after you.”
“You’re too kind, jefe.”
With the shotgun in his left hand, Teta used his right to find a depression in the rock and hauled himself up, wedging the tips of his boots where he could. When he was about five feet over my head, I tried to follow his path. It wasn’t so bad. Everything was dry and sturdy. A few small rocks were dislodged as we made our way up, but nothing to worry about. I looked down and saw Angus right on my heels. He’d looped the blades through his belt and they clanged and scraped off the rocks. He took to climbing the hills like a duck to water. The man’s size was very misleading.
I kept waiting for something to happen. Images of heavy iron pots filled with flaming oil tipping over us filled my brain. I shook it away. We weren’t knights and this was no castle. What I had to worry about w
as what could potentially be waiting for us when we made it to the mine entrance. If it was filled with more of those wild men, we were done. There was no sense trying too hard to strategize because we were up against something that didn’t make any sense.
And there was Selma. I had to get to her, no matter what the cost. If we were all going to die up here in these hills, we were going to die together.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Teta said, taking a cautious step with his right foot.
“I can’t even imagine.”
“Remember when we busted those guys who were smuggling guns for the Eastman Gang?”
The Eastman Gang was the terror of the Lower East Side back in New York. If there was a dirty racket, they had their noses in it. Those thugs were everything from thieves, to pimps, to killers for hire. We’d gotten a tip that a boatload of guns was coming into the harbor, all destined for the sweaty hands of the Eastman Gang. Big Monk Eastman was still the ringleader at the time, and he needed some heavy firepower to make a go at an all-out turf war with the Five Points Gang. The NYPD had a guy undercover who’d brought the shipment to our attention. Teta and I volunteered to be part of the squad that was to intercept both the boat and the gang members that were sent to get the guns.
We had men stationed everywhere along the docks. It was very hot that night, especially for mid-May. Teta and I were situated under the pilings, waiting for a signal from another cop on the neighboring dock to make our move. The smell of fish and oil was so heavy it would take four washings to get it out of my clothes.
The boat pulled in and we listened to footsteps above as men hustled back and forth.
When the signal came, Teta and I climbed up the pilings. We were to be the first line of defense should the men try to beat a hasty retreat off the bridge.
“We climbed up onto the dock like a couple of kids on a tree,” Teta said, pulling himself up another foot. “I remember thinking, What the hell are we getting ourselves into? I mean, we knew everyone on that dock would have a gun, but we didn’t know how many there would be or how they would react when they saw our pretty faces. We had no cover. It was just us and them and a shitload of guns.”