by Hunter Shea
We could just about see the opening of the tunnel when the hills shook. Dislodged rocks and dirt rained on our heads. A terrific concussion rocked us off our feet and we collapsed in a pile.
“I don’t want to die in here!” Teta shouted.
He scrambled to his feet and swayed from side to side, holding his hand out to us. “Hurry!”
Terror seemed to double his strength. He yanked me into a standing position with little help from me. Even Angus was able to get himself upright thanks to Teta.
We ran for the exit, ignoring the larger rocks that pelted us and the groaning of the failing wooden beams.
And then things took a mighty sour turn.
Chapter Forty-Three
The wild men had returned.
Their deranged caterwauling filled the air as we stumbled out of the shaft. We couldn’t see them yet, but sure as shit they were making their way right to us. The woods were alive with the frantic sounds of their approach.
The rumbling had stopped and puffs of dust billowed out of all of the mine entrances. “I think the hills wanted us out so we could be served up to those things,” I said.
Teta scrambled to the lip of the ridge and looked down. “I don’t see them yet but the smaller trees are swaying pretty hard. There must be a thousand of them.”
“Think we got too close for comfort?” I asked Angus.
“I wish I could tell you. If you want to take the path for the other side of the hills, I’ll stay here and fight them off as long as I can.”
Angus’s words staggered me. We barely knew him, and in most of that time, we’d treated him with suspicion and doubt. Now here he was, willing to lay down his life for us. I’d been around countless brave men, but never one so willing to give up everything in the face of such mind-shattering madness for basic strangers.
“I can’t let you do that,” I said.
Teta was mesmerized by the wailing, rocking forest. “Too bad we didn’t have more warning. I would have set the whole forest on fire and burned those sons of bitches.”
“Teta, you’re handier than a pocket on a shirt! Angus, use your machete to get some more bark and sap out of that tree.”
We ran to the pine tree we’d used before and doused my torch with as much sap as we could collect. I burned my hand like an overdone steak when I wedged extra bark into the splits at the end of the torch. Pretty soon, the whole thing was blazing.
“Can you pull down some of those other branches?”
Angus broke off a pair of four-foot branches with ease. He rubbed them against the open wound in the tree, getting them slick with sap.
“How good’s your arm?” I asked him.
“Very.”
“I’ll light the first branch and you toss it into the middle of that stand of trees. This place is so dry, it’ll go up fast.”
I touched the torch to the branch and stepped back when the fire rose above my head. Angus heaved the branch midway into a cluster of trees below us. They erupted into flames. The shrieks and cries of the wild men went up an octave. I don’t think they were expecting that.
Teta held out his hand. “Me next.”
I gave him the branch and set it alight.
“You should aim for the ground. With all that leaf litter, it’ll create a wall they can’t get through, while the rest burns them from above.”
“Oh, I’ll burn their asses up muy bien.”
He held the branch to his side. The flames crept dangerously close to his hand. He watched the trees wrapped in a halo of fire.
“What are you waiting for?” I shouted.
“I want to see their eyes, make sure they’re good and close so they can be formally introduced to the flames.”
I wasn’t convinced it was the best thing to do and I was tempted to throw my torch and get things going. The army of wild men sounded none too happy. Their high-pitched shrieks were enough to raise the hairs on my neck.
Little dots of red came into view, weaving within the pitch black in the gaps between the trees. I tried counting, but they were moving around so much I lost track around fifty. I figured if I multiplied that by ten or more, I’d have a pretty good handle on the number of creatures coming our way.
“How can there be so damn many?” I said.
The first faces bled from the darkness. The orange light from the trees gave us a clear view as the first line of wild men broke from the tree line. To my dying day, it was a sight I’ll never forget. They were tall, broad, hairy and angry as all get-out. They spotted us and, as one, bared their rotten teeth, baying like manic wolves.
I jerked when Teta howled back. “Here’s something to cry about!”
The branch whirled end over end. At the top of its arc, it looked like the wind was going to extinguish the flame. My arm flexed as I prepared to follow with my torch if Teta’s became a dud. But fate wasn’t the mean old cuss I’d made him out to be, and the whole branch reignited a second before it hit the dry forest bed.
The forest floor blazed instantly. The first dozen wild men caught fire as the flame grabbed their long, matted fur. They screamed with an agony and intensity that should have severed their vocal cords. As they pinwheeled and ran in agonized circles, they set the others around them on fire as well. The line of flame continued to snake along their ranks.
Night turned to day as wild men and trees met in an epic conflagration. The heat was so intense I felt my face begin to burn.
“Holy cow.”
“There’s nothing holy about that,” Teta said, spitting over the ridge and into the fiery melee.
It looked as if all the world were on fire. The air hummed with the shrieking of the dying and damned.
“I wonder why they’re not turning to smoke,” I said.
“They are smoke now,” Angus replied, his gaze locked on the scene below.
Black, writhing clouds boiled into the sky and overpowered our noses. It smelled like rotten eggs and sizzling meat. My stomach roiled.
I said, “We should make our way to the other side of the hills while we have a chance.”
“I think we did a pretty good job on this side,” Teta said. The reflection of the devouring flames flickered in his wide eyes.
We were so busy staring into the flames and the flailing wild men that we never noticed what had crept up behind us.
Chapter Forty-Four
When I turned to look for the best way to hit the road, I had to take a startled step back.
I was close to the ledge and Angus had to snatch my arm to keep me from falling.
The boy and girl with the black eyes stood silently a couple of feet from us. Their faces were so pale and drawn it was as if they’d lived in a world without sun or a decent meal all their lives. Their large, round eyes were as black as the heart of an evil man’s soul.
They didn’t move, didn’t blink. The back of the boy’s hand touched the back of the girl’s. My gut told me they weren’t here to ask for food and water this time.
“You kids shouldn’t be here,” I said. The words sounded as asinine coming out of my mouth as they must have to them. These weren’t ordinary kids. They were Hecla’s children.
Angus broke into an odd smile. He squatted down so he was eye level with them. He said, “Madal intres avok.”
Their coal-black eyes swiveled in his direction and their bodies followed stiffly.
Angus closed his own eyes and tilted his head back as if he were listening to an old song played around a campfire.
The children smiled, and he opened his eyes again. “Thesvud, thesvud.”
Teta and I held our breath. I wasn’t sure what to make of the odd exchange between the giant and the eerie kids. Smoke burned my eyes. I stared at them through a film of tears. Angus mumbled something and the kids tilted their heads to the right in perfect unison. It was like watching a couple of w
indup toys. The big man nodded. I knew they were communicating with him somehow, even though their mouths never moved and they didn’t make even the slightest sound.
All thoughts of making a hasty retreat left our minds. Despite their unnatural eyes and disconcerting mannerisms, by all appearances they were still children, no matter who, or what, had birthed them.
Teta, ever the realist, was the one able to break their spell. “Guys, we have to move our asses. Bring the kids if you have to, but let’s go now!”
The moment he spoke, I could once again feel the heat of the flames at my back and hear the desperate cries of the wild men. Angus said something that was drowned out by the bedlam below us.
The boy raised his small arm and pointed to the blistering trees. “They’re coming.”
“We’ll help you,” the girl said.
I looked back and saw the boy was right. Hell was tramping toward us.
* * *
The out-of-control blaze only delayed the inevitable. The wall of flame wasn’t enough to stop them. Granted, it did give them a moment of pause, but in the end, they took to the fire like a pig to slop.
Hundreds of them were fully engulfed in flames.
Their initial shock had worn off and they were no longer running around in mass pain and confusion. Now, they were an army of seven-foot, fiery behemoths, and they were climbing up the hillside.
Their eyes seared through the veil of fire that covered them from head to toe. They wore the flames as easily as I wore my shirt. When I was a kid my mother once showed me a painting of Hades in some old book she had. She’d said, “Nat, you have to mind your parents, and obey the laws that God has put before us. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a very bad place, just like this, for eternity. Do you understand how long eternity is?”
“Forever,” I’d answered, not comprehending how long the word implied.
“Good.” She’d stroked my hair and squeezed my earlobes. “Hell is a place you never want to visit, much less live. I won’t raise my boy to become one of the devil’s playthings.”
That picture and my mother’s words had scared me good back then. It wasn’t until she died the next year that their power began to fade, until I hadn’t even thought of it at all for another forty years.
Mom, I’m glad you’re not here to see this.
A picture in a book was one thing. Seeing a landscape choked with flames and smoke with inhuman creatures draped in fire climbing to take your life was a whole different animal. Their lips were twisted into demonic grins. I could feel their mad desire to tear us into pieces. They had fanned out into a wide arc around the base of the hill. It looked like they had formed a ring around the entire Deep Rock Hills.
Teta clapped his hand on the back of my collar and pulled. “We can’t fight them off, jefe. We have to run.”
Angus turned toward the mine and said, “We won’t have to fight them alone.”
The boy and girl opened their jaws until their mouths were wide open. I expected them to scream. No sounds escaped from their lips. A ferocious gust of wind blasted us and I clutched my hat before it blew off. The passing wind slipped into the various mine entrances, whistling a haunted melody.
From out of the mines poured dozens of tiny, pale forms. Their shuffling feet made no noise, raised no dust. They streamed out of the mines and gathered before us.
At least a hundred black-eyed children surrounded us. The smallest looked to be no older than two, while the oldest, a tall girl with long, blonde hair that glittered like sunlight off a fast-moving stream, was twelve, thirteen tops.
Teta stopped trying to drag me away. His mouth hung open, similar to the boy and girl that had called their friends from the depths of the mine.
“I am going to kick Teddy’s ass when I see him,” he said.
“Save some for me.”
The black-eyed children gathered into tight rows and became still. It was as if they were waiting for an order – like we had back in Cuba, watching the Colonel ride before our ranks, waiting for the right moment to set us loose. All I wanted to do was yell at them to turn back and get away. I could hear the wild men getting closer. When we ran out of bullets, we’d have to turn tail and hope we could put a safe distance between us. Getting in close with the machetes or sword was out of the question. It was a safe bet that we wouldn’t do so well if we were on fire.
Angus went back to his deadspeak and the children stared at him with unblinking attention.
He turned to us. “Be prepared. This is going to feel…strange.”
“What’s going to feel strange?” I asked.
Before he could answer, as one, the children swarmed to the edge of the cliff. We held out our hands in a futile attempt to ward them off.
They’re committing mass suicide! Why are they diving headlong over the ledge into the clutches of the wild men?
My body was thrown into an ice-cold river as the first row of children ran through us. My organs froze as body after body became one with mine, passing out the other side. A sharp, stabbing pain pierced my brain and I felt myself losing consciousness.
I fought my body’s desire to shut down. My knees threatened to go, but I refused to let them. Ghostly child after ghostly child violated the deepest parts of me, leaping from the ledge like lemmings. Teta was down on one knee, but Angus stood strong, beaming like a proud parent. The passage of the children seemed to have no effect on him at all.
I instinctively gulped for air like a drowning man when the last row of kids made their way over the ledge. Shivering uncontrollably, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to lock my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.
Angus peered over the ledge and pointed. “Look.”
Teta and I stumbled to the precipice. I worried that I would pitch forward, I felt so weak, so trampled upon.
What we saw was a war never before waged on God’s green earth, and I prayed it never would be again.
Chapter Forty-Five
The children blazed with a brilliant light as sharp as the full moon on a clear night. They plowed into the burning wild men, passing through their bodies like they had done with us. Only with the wild men, the results were far different.
As soon as a child came in contact with a wild man, the flames extinguished themselves.
As the child emerged from the beast’s back, the wild man exploded into dust and smoke.
The wild men cawed and screeched and hollered, but the children darted from one to the other without making a sound. The smoke of the vanquished wild men soon rivaled that pouring from the burning trees and ground.
Seeing as Angus was the only one who seemed to know what was going on, I said, “What should we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do with the wild men. The children will take care of them for us.”
Blurs of white light zigzagged through the throngs of wild men. It was a one-sided slaughter, and done without firing a single bullet or uttering a solitary word or command. “Who are they?” I said.
“The children taken from their families, from their futures.” I was terrified by their silent ferocity.
Teta shook with chills. “Did they live in Hecla?” Angus nodded.
“So, they’re dead?”
He nodded again, smiling as he watched them lay waste to the wild men.
I said, “I don’t think they’re doing this just so we can watch them like fat field generals. We better search more tunnels and find Selma, fast. Angus, did you get anything from them that would lead you to believe that we can cross out the rest of the entrances here?”
He wiped beads of sweat that had collected on his smooth head. “She’s not on this side of the hills.”
“If we follow this path, it’ll take us to the western side of the hills, where we first came,” Teta said. “All of the openings here are half the size of what we saw t
here. If I was going to take Selma, that’s where I’d go.”
“Yeah, but we’re not on the trail of a crazy Dominican gun hand.” I raised my hand before he could object. “But you do make a good point and that is where we saw the first wild man, and Franklin and his diseased dog. Let’s go.”
It was harder than I thought, tearing ourselves away from the fight. The wild men’s ranks were dwindling, and the ghost children moved like fluttering birds. The scene burned itself into my brain, and I was sure it would be my final memory before I breathed my last. We jogged down the cut in the hillside, searching for more shaft openings. It was difficult in the dark, made harder by the oily smoke that choked the moon and stars. If the fire continued to spread, there would be no difference in visibility between the interior of the mines and out here. I wasn’t sure how long our torches would hold out, or if we had the time to make more.
Time.
I felt it slipping through my hands. How long would the hills hold Selma before they got tired of our bumbling around? Or would they be infuriated by the way the spirit children helped us and take their anger out on her? Up until now, we had been lured to the hills with zero assistance. I couldn’t help but worry that the black-eyed children had saved us, only to doom Selma.
“Do you hear that?” Teta asked, keeping pace beside me.
All I could hear was my blood pounding in my ears and my breath laboring through old, tired lungs.
“It sounds like something growling,” he added.
“Well, whatever it is, I don’t have time for it. Shoot anything you see.”
We kept running, the billowing smoke whispering at our backs. I wanted to make the west side with the main tunnel before the soot made it impossible to find.
My chest was burning and there was a sharp stitch in my side, but I pushed the pain as far from my mind as I could. There was a very good chance that if I stopped now I wasn’t getting up again. Every muscle in my legs twitched with exertion.
Just keep running, Nat.
“It doesn’t sound like an animal,” Teta said.