How long he’d stood there — buckled over, spitting up and waiting out the urge to puke — he couldn’t say. Felt like an hour but it could have been just a few minutes. He was aroused from his stupor by a sudden fluorescence: a reddish hue flushing over the ground with the urgency of a shooting star, his head craning skywards, his eyes gaping in curious disbelief at the flare bristling against the night sky. The wind whisked it out of sight behind the trees and Émile had almost resolved that he ought to maybe look into that when his gaze settled back on the grave.
The moon was rippling within the watery hole. It looked more like someone had buried a bathtub than dug a final resting place and he stood there a moment telling himself he ought to finish what they’d started, knowing that it’d be a miracle if he even got two feet down before it would be the death of him.
Still, he couldn’t just leave them like that.
With the same resolve that had gotten him out of bed every morning when he was a peace officer, no matter how bad it had been the night before, he stumbled forward. He’d just pitched the spade into the sodden ground beside the bodies when: pop! It sounded like someone shooting off a rifle. Probably just some drunk, boozed up on Canadian Club, no better than him. It was followed by another pop! as like the other that it struck Émile it was simply answering the first, two drunks calling out to each other in the night. He stood up, thinking that if he heard a third he’d have to do something about it.
The tracks were raised some six feet off the field. He couldn’t see anything of the camp beyond the vague outline of treetops and then all of a sudden he could: a burst of such glaring luminescence that it seemed to him the whole camp must have been set on fire. Dropping the shovel and lurching forward, hearing the stuttered rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun merging into the concussive shock of an explosion out of which emerged a solitary scream shortly joined by a full chorus growing into a symphony of misery and woe orchestrated, he saw as he crested the rail bed, by a man standing on the top of a school bus parked in the centre of the field. A geyser of flame leapt from the nozzle in his hand, gushing in a sweeping circle of fire over the tents and RVs, their occupants spewing forth from doors and stumbling out of flaps only to be consumed by the infernal spray as the man on the bus picked them off with the casual malice of a young boy burning ants through a magnifying lens.
Émile horrorstruck, gaping with catatonic despair at the panorama of suffering playing out before his very eyes, benumbed by the state of his drunk so that the scene registered in his mind as some far-off thing, a nightmare too terrible to be real. People fleeing in all directions against a staccato of gunshots and a heavier pounding, like a jackhammer. Tracking that towards the woods on the far left as the barrage sliced through those in flight towards the treeline, men, women and children alike shredded in its wake like piñatas filled with blood, spying then a worse blight even than that.
A dozen or so men were emerging from the trees. All of them were giants, shaven of head and bare of chest, their skin as pale as ash. They were carrying weapons of a crude and medieval design and wading into the burning lake of fire, lending their blades to the carnage, hacking and slashing like some demonic vanguard of hell’s own army unleashed to wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting earth. That sight at last enough to spur him into action. His hand groped for his sidearm, knowing even as he loosed it from its holster and drew himself forward, propping his arms on the tracks and sighting at once on the man with the flamethrower, that he might as well have been holding a squirt gun for all the good it would do him now.
He squeezed off a shot and it went wide, he couldn’t tell by how much, only that the man was still standing. His back was to Émile, the flame-geyser dousing the north side of the camp, and Émile could clearly see the two tanks affixed to his back. Émile took more careful aim this time, adjusting for the wind’s bluster and steadying his hands, taking a breath, pulling the trigger on the exhale and then pulling it again and again and again. The last one must have hit the tanks as a bright flash flared — an explosion of such a rare and brilliant white that it scalded Émile’s vision same as if he had been staring into the sun. Averting his gaze and shutting his eyes, and that hardly sparing him from the intensity of its bright. A Big Bang’s worth of spectral after-flares exploding from beneath the closed flaps of eyelids and a woman screaming:
Stop! You’re hurting me! Let me go!
She was cast against the sea of flames and with his vision still blurred from the retinal burn he couldn’t see much about her except that she was short and squat and was being harried along the path at the base of the railway bed by a woman tall and lank, clutching at her hand. She was fighting her every step with the tantrum of a child being dragged away from the playground, slapping at the other’s hand and venting her bile in vitriolic bursts.
Let me go! I said. I want to go back to bed! Stop it! You’re hurting me!
Two men were chasing after them in frantic pursuit — a scrawny little runt hauling at the arm of a lumbering oaf about twice his size. The first was holding a knife with a blade as long as his forearm and Émile only had to blink once to see that it was Gerald Nichols. Gerald was looking up at him, wide-eyed, as surprised by the cop’s sudden appearance as Émile was by his, his expression taking a frightful turn as Émile raised the sidearm in his hand, taking a clear bead at his chest. And there was no doubt in his mind that he would have pulled the trigger too, if his finger hadn’t been stayed by the sight of the man stumbling to keep up behind.
He’d met Trent a dozen times and on each occasion the gentle giant had walked right up to him, exclaiming with childish glee, I like policemen! You’re my friend!
The first time he’d been with Brett and after Trent had wandered off, Brett had commented that he looked just like Frankenstein’s monster if he’d been assembled out of a bunch of gangly teenagers, a startling contrast to his demeanour for he was about the smilingest-friendly person Émile had ever met. Shooting Gerald Nichols would mean he was also as good as dead and he’d have just as soon shot himself than cause harm to a soul as innocent as Trent.
As Gerald dragged him past, the oaf was beaming at the flames, squealing his delight and crying out in fervent exultation, Pretty! It’s so pretty!
Émile watching him prance on by, all the while thinking, God, what I wouldn’t do to trade places with him.
35
Devon was sitting up, blinking against his drowse and more so against the way the world seemed to be spinning off its axis. His daughter, Sophie, was crying a piercing wail and that felt like someone driving a nail deeper into his right temple with every shriek. He’d probably catch hell for that too, waking the baby with his snoring, which is why he’d thought his son must have been shaking him awake.
He always snored after he drank and he’d been drinking plenty last night while he was playing cards with Larry and his friends, using the storm as an excuse to explain why he was out so late when he’d finally stumbled home. Wendy was sore mad then and her mood wouldn’t likely have improved since, especially with the baby crying such an anguish that there seemed nothing Devon could do about it except lie down, close his eyes again and draw the sheet up over his head.
Dad! Hands were shaking him again and Bud was yelling into his ear. Dad, you got to get up. Something’s happening. Dad! Dad!
He was pulling at the sheet, Devon’s hands tugging back at the thin fabric, feeling it slipping from his grasp.
Dad! Wake up!
Devon pushing back at him, muttering, I’m sick. Let me be, and the boy calling out in panicked defeat, Mom, he won’t get up!
A faint and distant clattering. It sounded enough like the sudden burst of hail on the roof of the freight car when he’d finally fallen into bed that he didn’t pay it much mind. It was answered by a bang! that couldn’t have been anything but a rifle shot, loud enough that it sounded like someone had fired it off not two feet from his head.
And th
en his brother was calling out, Where the hell’s your dad?
He’s passed out drunk.
The matter of fact tone in his son’s voice, like he couldn’t have expected better from his father, was finally enough to get Devon to cast off the sheets.
I’m up, he said trying to lever himself back to a sit. I’m up, I’m up.
Out of the dark there appeared a patch of flaming orange hovering before him like a piece of tissue paper set ablaze and bobbing on the end of a fishing line, his eyes trying to focus on it and thwarted in their every attempt. Then it was gone, eclipsed by a shadow as big as his older brother. He felt Brett’s meaty hands clasping his arm, dragging him roughly to his feet. Brett’s breath stank of rotting teeth and the sour taint of rye so Devon knew he’d been drinking too. The overwhelming stench of it was too much for his delicate state and he heaved over, puking onto the floor, his brother tightening the grip on his arm to keep him from falling down.
You picked a helluva time to turn into dad, he scolded, pulling him back upright, Devon grinning at him, trying to regain his favour.
How do you like them peas now! he said.
It was a line that had formed an almost sacred bond between them ever since Devon, then five, had refused to eat his peas at dinner one night. Their father had flown into a rage, though it wasn’t his son he was mad at, it was something that had happened at work he’d been brooding, and drinking, over ever since he’d got home. He’d stormed out of his seat, grabbing Devon by the hair with one hand and stuffing a spoonful of peas into his mouth with the other, all the while screaming, How do you like them peas now! Ever after, when one of them had run afoul of their father and felt the sting of his hand or his belt because of it, the other would search out where he’d gone to sulk it off, offering him the same in what had become an all too common refrain. How do you like them peas now! never failing to get a smile, and that, for as long as they’d lived at home, their only salve against their father’s wrath until he’d found God and that had finally cured him of the drink for good.
Except Brett wasn’t smiling now. He lashed out, smacking Devon hard in the face with the back of his hand.
Sober up, goddamnit! he yelled. And fetch your rifle. Now!
Leaving him then on wobbly feet and storming back towards the freight car’s door, the sting of his brother hitting him finally enough to rouse Devon to the fact that something dire was afoot, for he’d never once struck him before.
Lumbering towards the door and his son appearing in his path, handing him his glasses first, waiting until he’d slipped those on and then thrusting the Remington .303 into his hands. He grasped that as a drowning man would a lifesaver and stumbled on, seeing Wendy’s face appearing now in the glow cast from the door. She wasn’t angry, as he’d expected. She looked … And this was the strange thing. She looked plain terrified. Sophie was at her breast, sucking greedily, and in the absence of her screams he could hear others — an almost spectral wailing increasing in pitch and timbre with each passing breath and drawing him on reluctant feet past his wife and child.
What had appeared as a flaming tissue he could now see was the strip of orange in the door curtain’s tie dye. The darker shades of blue above and below blotted out the light but not the orange, which pulsated with such effervescence that it seemed like the very world beyond had been set ablaze. Brett was crouched in front of it with his rifle parting the veil, its barrel tight against the container’s steel frame and his one eye pressed to its scope, tracking something with a subtle declination and squeezing the trigger, oblivious to Devon reaching out, prying the curtain’s other seam and stepping through the breach, seeing at once that the whole world did in fact look like it had been set on fire.
People were fleeing in all directions, some drenched in flames and others, no better off, fleeing into a briar patch of machine gunfire. And worse even yet: what appeared to be creatures of a demonic descent stalking amongst it all, lashing out at the survivors with blades of a dark and malevolent design, the closest in view not twenty paces away. He was carrying a severed head gripped by the hair in one hand and using the other to slash a spiked mace down on a German shepherd tied to a chain and pouncing at him with snarled teeth. Brett let off another shot, catching the creature in the chest, stumbling him back with the dog lunging at his neck, the both of them pitching backwards, disappearing within the rippling sea of tents.
Brett was then yelling, Get down, goddamnit! You’ll get yourself killed!
He seemed so far away.
Feeling a hand on his arm, dragging him down. His head was reeling again, from the screams and the smoke and the booze. Someone was calling out, faint and indistinct, and that drew him out of his haze, looking up and seeing a huddled mass of figures hurrying down the tracks. The man in the lead was the scrawny little fellow they’d picked up that afternoon who Brett had insisted was none other than Gerald Nichols though he’d looked more like a crazy surfer bum than the man Devon had imagined him to be.
Maybe you can get him to sign your knife, Brett had jeered, meaning the one he’d bought online, the same make as the one Gerald’s grandfather had given him for his sixteenth birthday and which Gerald had carried on his belt into the northern wilds those six years ago. The derisive tone in Brett’s voice had further convinced Devon that he must have been teasing him, knowing how much his younger brother had once admired Savage Gerry so.
The man was clutching at the hand of a simpleton whom Devon knew as Trent and there was something about the way he harried him along — against all reason — and something more about the look in his eyes — the same truculent recalcitrance which had imbued his father’s on the day he’d been born again — that told him that maybe Brett had been right after all.
Finding an odd sort of comfort in that and also in the tenor of the man’s voice, cutting through the mad holler of screams and the mayhem as if maybe there was still some hope yet to be found in all this madness.
Start the train! Gerald was yelling. Start the goddamn train!
36
The nurse was kneeling at his side, slapping his face, imploring in a whispered scream, Get up! Goddamnit, get up!
Clayton was lying prone on the ground at the foot of a maple tree, not fifteen strides through the woods at a hard run from the hospital’s emergency exit. Couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes since they’d fled the hospital but it felt like an eternity with the wind carrying a chorus of screams punctuated by gunfire from the camp, her all the while trying to rouse him, slapping his face, whisper-screaming in his ear and when that didn’t work pinching him hard on the arm. Still, it wasn’t enough to get him to more than moan and she was waylaid in her efforts by the frantic crackling-pound of footsteps.
Looking up, she saw two shadows careening out from behind the hospital tent, hightailing it into the cover of trees. There was the shadow of a man shortly chasing after them, stopping as soon as he came into view and raising the silhouette of a rifle to his eye. A loud bang! then, followed by a whoop of glee.
Hot damn! I got one!
To whom he was calling out it wasn’t clear and the moment after he spoke he hurried off in renewed pursuit of the one that got away. The nurse heard the snap of a branch underfoot from somewhere close and then Clayton was moaning again. His eyelids were flickering but they were a ways from opening yet. Clamping her hand over his mouth, she froze as still as a mannequin, too afraid to move or even breathe.
A spiralling ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka sounded from behind her, almost like a rattlesnake shaking its tail. The nurse gripping Clayton harder now and her eyes darting into the dark depths, looking for a way out and seeing only the vague outline of trees and the dark spaces between, neither doing her a damn bit of good. Shocked then into the harsh glare of LEDs, alighting from not five feet in front of her. The flashlight, she could see, was affixed to the barrel of a machine gun from which a laser sight beaded d
ead centre on her forehead. In his other hand its owner was holding a child’s spinny toy.
With a flip of his wrist it let out another ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka. She lunged sideways, same as if it really had been a rattlesnake, and scurried headlong into another man as solid as a tree. She peered up at him towering over her, leering right back. In the LED’s bright she could see a mess of brackish curls — a hillbilly beard — above which night-vision goggles concealed his eyes but hardly his grin, ecstatic and malevolent as the man clamped his hand under her armpit and hoisted her roughly to her feet, crooning, Well boys, looky what we got here!
She’s a real sweetheart, all right.
This from the rattle-man even as she was reaching under her scrubs, snatching at the scalpel she’d secreted in the waistband. She lashed out with it, plunging it into her captor’s thigh deep enough to hit bone. His hand sprung loose and she darted forward, dodging for the cover of trees. She’d hardly made two steps before he’d recovered and was snatching out at the trailing wisps of her ponytail, catching a handful and jerking her off her feet.
Twisting the hair around his knuckles as tight as a tourniquet, he dragged her back up. Holding her at arm’s length, he propped his shotgun against the tree, using his free hand to pry loose the scalpel from his leg as if it was nothing more bothersome than a thorn.
You’re gonna live to regret that, he growled, wheeling around and pulling her, kicking and screaming, into the shadows, any and all hope for a possible future reduced to the rattle-man calling after them: Make sure you leave some for us this time!
He’d since turned his attention to Clayton. He was standing over him straddle-legged with his manhood dangling out of his unzipped pants, aiming a steady stream at the gap parting Clayton’s front teeth and cajoling, Wakey, wakey.
What the hell are you doing? a third man asked.
Savage Gerry Page 20
