Night-Blooded Boys, page 11
part #3 of Pitchfork County Series
Black, swirling smoke poured from the rear of the machine. It coiled in the air, neither rising nor falling, but swelling by the second.
The guards hustled down to the work site, guns at the ready, night vision goggles slapped down over their eyes. Joe pulled Stevie deeper into the brush, wary of being picked out against the cool hillside by thermal imaging bullshit. The last thing they needed was some wannabe sniper taking potshots at them while they tried to get the hell into the wind.
The worker slid the silver bowl under the seething black cloud, then averted his gaze and backed away. Fist-sized drops of liquid ebony fell from the mist and into the bowl, each falling glob landing in the bowl with a blaring crash that echoed through the valley.
“How about now?” Joe whispered in Stevie’s ear. “Now can we assume these assholes are the bad guys?”
“Maybe those guys.” She nodded past Joe. “But definitely those guys over there.”
They were coming through the trees, slithering from branch to branch like overgrown, milk-pale lizards. Their eyes, deep set and glowing like cigar butts in the darkness, flared as they caught sight of Joe and Stevie. Joe shrugged the shotgun’s sling off his shoulder and caught it in his right hand. The pale shapes seemed to multiply as they came, filling the shadows with white death. “Shit.”
Stevie grabbed his arm and pulled Joe away from the gathering creatures. The pale forms were fencing them in, blocking the path to the site and closing a circle around them. Joe stayed close to Stevie’s heels when they began their retreat, but soon the space between them grew to a few yards. “Stevie,” he hissed, but she was moving too fast and was too far away to hear him.
The undergrowth tangled around Joe’s legs, and thick branches slapped at his face and chest. He could still see Stevie, but where she was able to slip through the woods with little trouble, he had to make constant detours. The distance between them was growing by the second.
Worse, Joe was having trouble keeping an eye on his wife. Every time the forest forced him to alter his course, he became less certain of the direction he was heading. He’d been born in these hills and had never thought he could get lost, but he was starting to feel as confused as a city-born tourist.
And the critters weren’t slowing down. Whenever he glanced over his shoulder, Joe saw the things closing in on him. They slipped from branch to branch like monkeys from hell, navigating the dense forest with no difficulty.
Joe ran into a branch that drew a hot line across his cheek. He could feel blood running down his face, sticky and steaming in the chill winter air. “Fuck,” he snarled and clutched his hand to his wounded face.
He stumbled over his own boots, and his shoulder smacked into a tree hard enough to twist him around. He caught himself against a second tree and tried to get his bearings. Stevie was nowhere to be seen, but the small forms were closer than ever. In a minute, maybe less, they’d be swarming him.
Joe backed away from the approaching enemies, trying to get a sense of the pale monsters. Their skin was so white it seemed to glow in the moonlight, and he could see veins squirming below the skin like thick, black worms. Their cherry-red eyes were sunken into black pits, the edges of which were ragged and uneven where they spread out to meet the alabaster skin. They moved with startling speed and agility, despite the fact that they seemed to have no bones. Their arms and legs flowed and bent in unnatural ways, an almost tentacular wiriness that reminded Joe of tree snakes. “Hell with this,” he whispered. He turned and ran.
The forest treated Joe like an enemy. His face was covered in scratches that wept red tears. Branches and brambles clutched at his shotgun, threatening to rip it from his hands. He could hear the little monsters catching up to him. Their chittering cries filled the air like a cicada’s drone. It was coming from three sides of him, and Joe knew the noose was tightening.
Joe turned on one heel and fired his shotgun into the forest. There were screams and howls of outrage. He didn’t know if he’d hit any of the little bastards, but he hoped he’d given them something to think about. They might kill him in the end, but he’d send a good chunk of that pack screaming to hell first.
He kept running, but his heart wasn’t in it. He no longer had any idea where Stevie or the Rambler were. The monsters were catching up to him too quickly. If he didn’t want to get run down like the wrong end of a raccoon hunt, Joe knew he was going to have to make a stand sooner rather than later.
A fallen log barred Joe’s path, and he threw himself over the mouldering tree. He snugged up against the natural barricade, rested the shotgun’s heavy barrels across its top. His pursuers were thirty yards away and closing at a dead run. They screamed when they saw he’d gone to ground, unleashing high-pitched hunting cries that seemed to draw them together and drive them forward with an overpowering hunger. There had to be at least twenty of them, coming at him in a savage charge.
Joe let out a resigned sigh. He hoped they were all on his tail and Stevie had gotten away clean. The shotgun was warm in his hand, the runes along its length glowing a green so bright it hurt his eyes. It was time to get down to the dirty business that made Joe so weary. “Come on, fuckers, let’s see how many of you I can burn down.”
The long, plaintive cry of the Rambler echoed through the forest. Its horn was loud and brassy and, best of all, closer than Joe had dared to hope. He fired off a shot that threw fire and smoldering silver at the onrushing pale forms. It lacked accuracy and finesse, but the spreading cone of death winged a few of the things and caused the rest to cower in momentary fear.
Joe took advantage of the distraction and threw himself through the forest. The horn blared again, and he followed it downhill. He was close enough to see the trusty old car’s lights filtering through the trees. The monsters were close. Joe really hoped Stevie had left a door open for him; he didn’t think he’d have time to mess with the handle before the creatures were on his back tearing him to shreds.
He hit the electric fence at a full run. Power arced around him, clawing its way up his arms and around his head. It lit up his brain like a Christmas tree. His arms and legs jerked straight as the power paralyzed him.
Joe could feel his enemies closing in. He didn’t have time to wait around being electrocuted. He dug into the power of the Long Man and the Haunter, shortening his life by a few days in exchange for the strength he needed.
The electrical current paled before the energy surging into him. Joe ripped the fence post from the ground and hurled it back toward the monsters on his tail. The wires parted with a spray of sparks, and the severed ends jerked and spat on the ground like serpents. Joe leaped across them and shoved his way through a tangled screen of blackberry vines.
The Rambler was waiting for him, door open just as he’d hoped. Joe scrambled around the front of the car, throwing long shadows in the headlights, then threw himself into the passenger’s seat. “Gogogo!” he shouted, slamming the door.
Stevie didn’t wait for Joe to buckle up. She jammed the pedal to the floor and twisted the Rambler around in a tight circle. Dead leaves and rotten branches spewed from under the car’s tires and into the faces of the creatures rushing up on its taillights.
The Rambler bounced back onto the track they’d come in on. Stevie kept the accelerator on the floor, and the distance between the car and those chasing it widened.
Joe hung his head out the window and looked back. “I think we’re going to make it. Looks like they’re turning back.”
“Shit,” Stevie shouted.
Joe spun back around in time to see one of the freakish white things leap from an overhanging tree branch. It landed on the gravel road inches ahead of the Rambler. It howled at Joe with a little boy’s face. This close, he could see that behind the black veins and glowing eyes, it was just a little kid.
Stevie didn’t have a chance to hit the brakes. The Rambler slammed into the boy, splattering his body across its bumper and sending his arms and head tumbling up onto the hood.
The Rambler screeched to a halt. Stevie held the wheel in both hands, breath rushing in and out of her clenched teeth with a faint whistling.
Joe put his hand on her shoulder and tried to deny what they’d both seen. “We have to keep going. It was a monster. Just a monster.”
Stevie twitched. “I recognized him. That was Ben Ames.”
“Not anymore. You did what you could. But now we have to get out of here before his buddies catch up to us and eat off our faces.”
“I can’t—” Stevie took a deep breath. “I can’t just leave him here. We have to bring his body back to his parents.”
“Fine.” Joe threw the door open and lunged into the street. The Rambler had gone over the kid at close to 50 mph. The grill was caked with all that was left of the boy’s torso: gobbets of pale meat and pints of clotted black goo the consistency of melting gelatin. One of the arms was still on the hood, the fingers hooked over the edge closest to the windshield.
The other one was on the road ahead, where it had been thrown when Stevie slammed on the brakes. It lay on the gravel like the remains of a phantom octopus, cold and pale and twisted up in an unnatural knot surmounted by a crown of fingers. Joe scooped the thing up by the wrist and held it out from his body as he walked on in search of the head. He watched the arm warily, as he expected the damned kid’s bits and pieces to start trying to claw at him.
The head rested at the edge of the Rambler’s headlights. It had tumbled to the side of the road before smashing into a big rock. Joe grabbed it by the hair and lifted it up to get a better look. The eyes were still black, but the glow was gone. The shredded stump of the neck drooled a line of tarry black onto the gravel as Joe walked back to the car. “What a fucking mess.”
He opened the Rambler’s hatchback and placed the head and arm in the roomy cargo space. He watched the body parts for long moments. When the little boy’s arm and head didn’t start flopping around or gnashing at the air, he headed down the road to look for the kid’s legs.
The taillights’ red glow showed Joe no sign of pale monstrosities chasing him. He found the legs a hundred feet down the road. Greasy streaks of black goo marred the white flesh and more of the slime oozed from the legs’ severed ends. He lifted them by their ankles and carried them back to the Rambler, trying not to retch at the unnatural feel of the floppy limbs in his hands.
He tossed the legs into the Rambler, then walked around the front of the car and lifted the remaining arm off the hood. Adding it to the pile in the back, Joe tried not to think about how this was going to end. He did not relish giving these body parts a proper burial or burning them in a trash barrel somewhere.
He definitely was not ready for what Stevie wanted to do with the boy’s remains.
“We have to give him back to his parents.” She didn’t look at Joe as she spoke.
“Oh.” Joe said. Shit, he thought.
21
The sheriff took one look in the back of the Rambler and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You son of a bitch.”
Joe stepped out of Laralaine’s punching range. “Let me explain.”
“There is half of a dead kid in the back of your car,” she growled. “I see no way you’re going to explain this that doesn’t end with you handcuffed in the back of my cruiser.”
Joe was tired of beating around the bush. It was time for the sheriff to get a big dose of the real world. He reached past her and into the back of the car, snatching up the kid’s head by its hair.
The sheriff recoiled from the twisted face Joe shoved at her. “Does this look like a normal kid to you?”
“Christ.” The sheriff unclipped her flashlight and shined its powerful beam into Ben Ames’s dead eyes.
Joe knew what she was seeing - eyes as black and clouded as a beached shark’s, ebony veins bulging against paper-thin skin. “So, how about it? You think this is just some kid I picked up off the street and hacked apart with my chainsaw?”
“I am not going to stand here and stare at this dead little boy. The coroner can explain it all to me after he completes his examination.”
Joe flipped the head up, showing the sheriff the deep black surface of the neck stump. “You see any bones in here? Anything you recognize at all?”
The sheriff’s stoic face was crumbling. Joe could see shivers working their way up her arms and into her chest. He tossed the head back into the Rambler and took Laralaine’s arm before shock could knock her down. “Stevie,” he called, “need a hand back here.”
Joe eased the sheriff back to her cruiser and helped her lean against the hood. She was as pale as the dead kid she couldn’t stop staring at. “What the hell is happening here?”
He looked into the hatchback and rubbed his chin. “Lady, I don’t know how you ended up here or what you thought you were doing when you took this job, but I hope to hell you’re starting to get the picture. Because if you aren’t, you are going to have a very hard time in our fine little county.”
Stevie took a seat next to the sheriff. She put her arm around the uniformed woman and began mumbling a simple, subtle healing spell. It wasn’t much, but Joe could see it took the edge off the sheriff’s shock. He waited for the shivering to stop and the color to come back into her cheeks before he continued.
“I’m pretty sure whatever got into this kid is the same shit that got into my family and the kid at the Flying J. He was sick before we were. Stevie thought she’d gotten him through the worst of it, but-” Joe trailed off, not wanting to dig at Stevie’s guilt. He didn’t know how the parasite worked, or if there was anything they could have done. He wasn’t sure why Ben reacted so differently to it, or whether everyone who’d contracted the infection would end up like him. He tried not to think about what that meant for him and his family.
The sheriff said nothing. She kept staring into the back of the Rambler.
“Are you going to help me with this shit?”
The sheriff looked at Joe, then back at the dead kid. “What do you need?”
“First,” Joe said, “we need to put this kid’s remains somewhere other than the back our car. I do not want to drive around with this mess leaking all over the back of the Rambler. Do you have a body bag or a tarp or something you could wrap it up in and take it to the station for his parents to identify later?”
The sheriff nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.”
Joe nodded. “Thanks. I also need you to come with us to the Ames’s place and make sure they don’t get too crazy when we break the news to them.”
She nodded again, shivered. “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”
They loaded the body into a heavy vinyl body bag that stank with a chemical reek so powerful Joe longed for the thick stench of the corpse. The body bag went into the sheriff’s trunk. “Just follow us. I’ll do the talking, all right? You’re just there to make this official and keep them from completely losing their minds.”
The sheriff followed them, though Joe had to keep asking Stevie to slow down so the cruiser could keep up with the Rambler. Stevie sighed every time he told her to tap the brakes. “I just want this done.”
“I know.” Joe tried to remember how many times he’d said those same words himself. He hoped Stevie never caught up to his tally.
It was well on to morning before they made it to the Ames’s place. There were no lights on in the trailer, and even the porch light was dark. Joe reached over and turned off the Rambler’s headlights as Stevie pulled into the Ames’s driveway. “I don’t think they even know their kid isn’t snug in his bed.”
The sheriff pulled up behind them and killed the cruiser. They gathered next to the cars, shoulders hunched against the predawn chill. Joe nodded to the sheriff. “Follow my lead. Don’t talk.”
He could see the fire in Laralaine’s eyes, but she nodded.
He knocked on the door, quietly, then more firmly when he didn’t get an answer. After thirty seconds of building up to a vigorous pounding on the door, Joe heard someone stirring inside. He stepped back and shielded his eyes to keep from being blinded when the porch light snapped on.
The door cracked open to reveal one bloodshot eye under a mop of greasy hair, staring out above the chain holding the door closed. Ken Ames eyeballed Joe, but didn’t unfasten the chain. “Joe, what the hell?”
“I need to come in. It’s Ben. There’s been an accident.”
“The fuck are you talking about? Shirley and Ben are in bed. You been drinkin’ again?” Ken started to push the door closed.
Joe shoved his palm against the door, putting enough force behind it to make sure Ken understood he wasn’t fucking around. “Open the door. Now.”
Ken grunted and closed the door. Joe could hear him muttering behind it as he unfastened the chain. When he opened the door again, he looked pissed and pathetic. Shirley poked her head out from the hallway, hair rising off her head in a snarled rat’s nest. She blinked her puffy eyes at Joe. “What’s going on?”
“You’re going to want to sit down for this.”
Ken crossed his arms and leaned against the far wall. “Just spill it so we can go back to bed.”
Joe shrugged. “There was an accident. Ben was killed.”
Shirley’s mouth fell open, and her eyes swelled in their sockets. “No. He’s in bed.”
She ran from the trailer’s living room, her panicked steps echoing down the hall. A door slammed open. Shirley’s scream tore at Joe’s ears.
“How?” Ken sagged against the wall. “I saw him go to bed. He’s too little to sneak out. How?”
Joe ground his teeth with frustration. He wasn’t good at this, but he knew he had to try. The days of just slaughtering monsters and letting someone else sort out the wreckage were behind him. He needed to remind folks that he was part of their community, that he was one of them. He took a seat on the arm of the couch, closer to Ken. “I wish I knew. I think there was something in the water. Something that affected Ben’s mind.”
