Sentinels

by Matt Manochio

  “How the hell can that candle burn?” Noah realized he sounded nervous. Her windowpane’s clean. No rain hitting it. Noah looked above the second level. No splashing on the roof. “Good lord, where are the soldiers?”

  The rain would not stop the two soldiers from maintaining their rounds, and neither had crossed Noah’s sightline since he arrived on the porch.

  “Hey, boys! Where are you?” No response. Why not take shelter under the porch?

  Noah looked at his ankle-high leather shoes, which were destined for ruin should he venture into the muddy sea fronting the office. He ducked back inside, went to a utility closet, and grabbed a dusty pair of Wellington boots he’d stored there should the occasion arrive when he might have to venture into water. He never thought it would occur on his town’s main road. He kicked off his shoes, slipped on the knee-high boots, and went back outside and closed the door. Lightning streaked sideways across the sky directly above the Sheriff’s Office. The flash revealed a figure wearing Klansman’s hood and dark clothes, charging down the road toward Noah. A second lightning bolt illuminated the fast-moving Klansman clutching a pitchfork and launching it like a trident toward Noah, who recoiled and grabbed for his gun. The pitchfork missed Noah by several feet and speared the wall separating the office’s front door and window. But Noah’s flinching gave the Klansman enough time to grab and ram him against the door, cracking Noah’s head against it.

  The Klansman pinned Noah with one arm while trying to grab the deputy’s head with the other. The strong bony hand grappled Noah’s entire face and rammed his head back into the door, popping off his Stetson. Noah squinted through the hood’s holes to find a hateful gaze glowering from eyes wreathed with ragged, dirty flesh. The Klansman’s reek overwhelmed Noah and reminded him of Civil War battlefields rife with the decaying dead.

  Dazed, Noah struggled to deflect his attacker with his left hand while drawing his gun with the other, jamming it into the Klansman’s diaphragm, unloading six shots through the body. The Klansman released and stumbled backward into the rain. It wore black overalls and Noah couldn’t see blood. The Klansman looked straight down at the wound and then back at Noah as lightning illuminated vacant white eyes. Noah fumbled with the doorknob and retreated inside the office, slamming shut and locking the door.

  “Guys, get up here!”

  Noah backed away from the wide front window and spotted three wriggling tines poking through the wood next to it. The prongs vanished backward as both soldiers entered the lobby from the rear.

  “What is it?!” Both soldiers spoke at once.

  “A Klansman, but—”

  A wagon wheel, from where the men couldn’t say, crashed through window, bringing in rain and wind. The lanterns stayed against the rear wall, keeping the place lit, but not enough for the men to see who threw the wheel.

  “Culliver.” Noah raced for the cell room, and to the soldiers said, “Whoever’s outside has a pitchfork!”

  Noah took a keychain from his pocket and flicked to the right one to open the cell room door, which the soldiers had the presence of mind to lock. Noah took refuge within and locked the door. Culliver lay unharmed on his bed, looking at Noah.

  “You wanna get in here with me?”

  Noah, panting, trying to comprehend what’d just happened, slipped bullets from his belt and into his Colt.

  “I do.” He loaded his weapon and unlocked Culliver’s cell, locking them both within it.

  Rifle blasts startled both men. Culliver tried sitting up but stopped when he felt his stomach’s stitches tugging apart. Noah aimed through the cell’s many iron squares at the cell room door. Raucous sounds of furniture toppling and glass breaking, then a soldier screaming “Help me!” as he stormed toward the doorway, followed by heavy boots stomping wood. The door trembled as, Noah guessed, someone rammed the soldier into it. Three successive, monstrous cracks against the door. Then a body falling into silence. The door itself began shimmying, hinges clanking. Someone clearly wanted in.

  Please don’t look for the keys on the soldiers. Maybe he’ll think I’ve got the only one.

  The door ceased rattling, and slow boot clomps faded down the hallway.

  “You all right?” Noah whispered behind himself.

  “Nossir. Neither of us are.”

  Noah sighed and brought back his gun. “There’s no way in here.”

  “That’s not what they’re thinking,” Culliver said.

  Noah waited for whoever was out there, likely more than one based on the ruckus coming from the lobby, to grab something big and blunt to use as a makeshift battering ram against the cell room door.

  An explosion from above Culliver’s cell rocked the wooden ceiling, cracking it like ice on a frozen pond.

  “Christ, they’re using dynamite! Get me away from here!” Culliver, with effort, lifted his left leg off the bed to stand.

  Noah swooped down to help him up as another blast widened the ceiling’s fissures and knocked both men against the cell’s far side. Ceiling planks scattered to form a crude watermelon-sized hole around crossed iron bars. Rain fell into the middle of cell. Noah sat Culliver against the bars and stood to the side of the hole, looking up to see what he could through the rain.

  Lightning revealed the hooded Klansman, pitchfork in hand, standing over the hole, looking down on Noah. Two other men joined him. Noah easily made out the sombrero but not the person wearing it, for the hat darkened the head. A cowboy whose black hat and bandana concealed his face, wielded two machetes, completing the trio.

  “The Mexican,” Noah heard from behind as Culliver shimmied next to him to peek above. The sight of Culliver triggered the threesome to rain their instruments onto the cell bars. The force of the Mexican’s ax on metal showered Noah and Culliver in sparks. The Klansman’s pitchfork tines were too wide apart to breach the cell’s crossbars. The one with the machetes dropped onto the cage as if to do pushups but instead slipped both arms through the grating and wildly sliced at Culliver.

  “Get back!” Noah in one fluid motion stooped to avoid the blades, pressed his hand to Culliver’s chest to guide him away from the knives, and drew and fired his Colt skyward. The bullets flitted through the cowboy’s torso, and he withdrew the blades and pushed himself up to stand. Noah felt as if he were staring up a well at the three marauders, who looked at one another, shaking their heads for they knew it impossible to break the bars. The Klansman dropped to glance a final time into the cell to see Noah furiously pushing bullets into his Colt while Culliver pressed himself against the cell bars, seemingly attempting to squish his body like clay through the bars to freedom.

  Noah spun shut his Colt’s cylinder and aimed but stopped when the men spoke in unison. It first began as rhythmic mumbling—clearly words, but spoken in a tongue Noah couldn’t identify. The men parted ways as their voices grew louder, and in their place Noah saw something that literally brought him to his knees.

  A massive black cloud swirled miles above him with lightning constantly streaking from all directions and joining in the middle to form an electrically charged eye.

  It started as a pulsing white ball nestled in blackness, but discharged with blinding speed, disjointedly tracing through the sky toward Noah, bathing the ceiling in brilliant light, ripping away wooden flesh to get to the iron skeleton. Rain vomited through the hole, splashing enough to douse both men.

  “Christ, they’re using lightning.” Noah jumped to his feet and holstered his gun. The stink of charred, wet wood panicked both men.

  “How?!” Culliver weakly moved his head from side to side, trying to see for himself.

  Noah turned. “Get off the cell!”

  A thick lightning bolt rocketed onto the ceiling’s bare metal bars, with rainwater conducting the electricity into Culliver’s cell. White tendrils snaked like vines in reverse around the now-humming iron squares. Culliver went rigi
d where he sat, outstretched feet twitching an inch above ground. Noah froze so as not to touch the bars and watched as lightning cooked Culliver’s body. The electric tentacles withdrew through the ceiling’s hole and Culliver slumped forward, his burnt skin sticking to the iron squares, leaving grisly grid marks on his bare back.

  Noah shook uncontrollably and covered his nose to shield it from a scorched-flesh scent. He looked at the ceiling and saw only rainy remnants dripping from iron bars and broken wooden planks. More than that, the sky grew brighter. Noah felt no relief when he gazed through the hole not to see raging heavens, but a full moon centered in a clear sky.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You’re lucky to be alive.” Doctor Richardson stood before Noah, who still trembled an hour later while sitting in a chair within Sheriff Clement’s personal office. The doc went to look in Noah’s eyes and the deputy politely held up his hand.

  “I told you I’m fine. It’d have been a different story if I wasn’t wearing these.” He reached to pat one of his knee-high rubber boot’s tops. “I’m pretty sure the electricity would’ve zapped me through the floor had I been in my regular shoes.”

  “I think it’s a miracle that there’s only one dead man in this office. Those two soldiers in the lobby are pretty banged up, but they’ll make it.”

  “What about the guys who were supposed to be out front? I was about to go looking for them before this all happened.”

  “Found them out back, unconscious on the ground. Each had pretty good bumps on their heads. That reminds me. I need to go check on all of them. I’m gonna need to order a few barrelfuls of morphine if this keeps up.”

  Clement stood cross-armed in his office’s open doorway and inched aside to let the doctor leave. “Sorry I wasn’t here to help you.”

  “There’s nothing you could’ve done.” Noah stood and paced around the office, running his hands across his arms and chest, making sure he was still whole.

  “You don’t know that. An extra hand in a fight against those guys could’ve come in handy,” Clement said. “I saw three of them scampering away from the place as I was riding back.”

  “Two of them should be dead or near it—no way they could survive those bullets.”

  “They could’ve armored themselves underneath, Noah. They sound crafty, probably knew there was a good chance of them getting shot.”

  “I pushed one of them off me as I fired. I felt the bastard’s ribs. He wasn’t wearing anything under his shirt.”

  “Could you’ve missed him?”

  “From a foot away? I’m not that lousy a shot. And after all that, I couldn’t stop them from killing Culliver.”

  “They didn’t. A freak storm did.”

  “There was nothing freak about it, sir. You didn’t see it. That lightning, it doesn’t make sense, but they directed it onto the jail.” Noah caught himself standing inches from Clement’s surprised face and backed away.

  Clement stayed cool but skeptical. “Directed it?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Clement laughed to himself. “Maybe they were Indians, doin’ a rain dance.”

  Noah clenched his fists by his sides. “It’s not funny.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. Didn’t mean nothing by it. And look, I rode back in that storm. People get struck by lightning, Noah.”

  Noah ignored the sheriff’s point. “Where’d it start?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The rain. Where’d it start hitting you?” Noah said.

  “Heck, I don’t know. Maybe a few blocks from here. You wanna sit back down again. You don’t sound too good.”

  “Jesus, Sheriff—I was almost struck by lightning inside a building. I think I’m allowed to sound jittery. And with all respect, have you ever heard of it violently raining on one quarter of a town and leaving the rest of it dry?”

  “The town’s just as wet as it is here.”

  “Was it raining when you left Yarnell at the hotel?”

  Clement thought about it. “It wasn’t—but it must not’ve started until I got closer to here. It was a quick storm.”

  “I’ll bet you anything it’s bone dry in front of the hotel.”

  “I think you should go home, Noah. I mean it. It’s near two in the morning and you’ve been through more than I think I could handle for a night. In fact, I’m ordering you, go home and don’t come back till you’re ready. Take tomorrow off. We can make do without you now that we don’t have anyone to protect here.”

  Noah remembered why he had to stay late. “Culliver’s still here?”

  Clement shook his head, disgusted. “No. Deputies Ellison and Boudreaux already carted him over to the mortician’s place.”

  “Nice of them to finally show up,” Noah mumbled.

  “There was a miscommunication. They thought they were supposed to be at the doc’s and got to shooting the shit with the guys there. Now get outta here.”

  Noah looked at the ceiling. “Our building isn’t even that tall.”

  “Do what now?”

  “Why would lightning hit this building when there’re much taller ones surrounding it?”

  “It’s two floors, Noah. Most of the buildings are.”

  “Yeah, but I know there are lightning rods on some of them—hell, the courthouse has one. And it’s right next to us.”

  Clement calmly walked beside Noah and draped his arm around the deputy’s shoulder to escort him outside. “I took the liberty of getting your horse from the stable out back. You okay to ride home?”

  “I’m wide awake.” Noah walked outside ahead of Clement and found Wilbur hitched to a post fronting the building. He mounted the horse, careful not to ride into the soldiers and other lookie-loos coming in and out of the place.

  “Stay home, Noah. Come back the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’m supposed to be off that day.”

  “Hell, take two days then.”

  “I will.” Noah trotted Wilbur to the opposite side of the road running parallel to the seamstress’s building. He thought about doubling back to the hotel but declined after realizing Wilbur clip-clopped on dry ground. Noah looked left at the mud patch in front of the Sheriff’s Office that abruptly ended about one foot beyond the building’s property lines.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “These men are of quality stock—they’ll do nicely.” Thomas Diggs, the next day, examined the railroad workers the way he judged whether black men would make good slaves.

  “Strong legs, big arms, muscular shoulders—I guess that’s attributable to you lifting things all day,” he said. “Are you any good with guns?”

  Seven of Robert Culliver’s former co-workers queued on the barren railroad platform during their lunch break to meet Diggs. The next train to Spartanburg would arrive in sixty minutes. Franklin and Lyle sat on a nearby bench and watched their boss.

  “We all served,” said Delbert Johnson, who spoke for the workers, not one of whom stood shorter than six feet. They wore different types of cowboy hats to block the sun. Each filled out greasy white T-shirts underneath blue overalls to convey uniformity. Their other common trait was the stink of men engaged in heavy labor.

  “Why didn’t you join that Culliver chap and the other fellows when they decided to attack that wheat farmer?”

  “Glad we didn’t.”

  “Answer, please.”

  “Found out about it kind of late. We wanted in on it, but their plans were pretty far along. Plus, we’re not too into camping in the woods. Right boys?”

  The men grunted.

  “Personally I didn’t see the need for all that sneaking around,” Johnson said. “The more you do it, the more likely you are to get caught by the Army or whoever.”

  “Now we’re thinking alike. The sheriff’s men are a bother, but I’m confident we c
an elude them if we do this right,” Diggs said. “You see, I’m currently in the middle of a complicated real estate transaction.”

  “You don’t usually bring guns to a land deal.”

  “You do if one of the parties refuses to sell.”

  Diggs briefed the railroad workers, and they couldn’t wait to participate once they learned the intended target.

  “He has, we believe, men working for him—and that necessitates you boys joining us to eliminate them, if it comes down to that, and I suspect it will. They are skilled with blades, and likely proficient at hand-to-hand combat. Rumor has it they attacked the Sheriff’s Office last night and killed your friend.” Diggs paused, and then: “My condolences, of course. Now, the men you’ll be working with have had two separate encounters with this farmer, and not once were they shot at, but they came very close to being slaughtered like your colleagues.”

  “Maybe they’re ninjas!” Franklin jumped from his seat, craving affirmation. “I read about them in the library. They’re these sneaky Japanese warriors that dress in black so you can’t see them. And they hop around and are good with swords.”

  Diggs spun on his heels to address his employee.

  “I don’t know which is more astonishing—that Franklin has identified a possible yet improbable explanation, or that Franklin can read.”

  Lyle smirked while the others chuckled.

  “Do me a favor, boy, remain quiet whenever you are in my presence except when I call on you for an opinion, which I can guarantee you will not be often.” Diggs did not look away from Franklin until he retook his seat awash in humiliation.

  “I’m not going to ask you to kill anyone,” Diggs continued. “But you should be prepared to do it. If you’re not comfortable with that, please walk away now.”

  “That’s all fine, but it’s not like we can drop everything and leave work when you want us to,” Johnson said.

  “Nor would I expect you to. You’ll be notified at least two days in advance. Five-hundred dollars a man.”

  The workers all nodded at each other while making happy man sounds.