Savannah smelled the dead man through the funk of spilled beer and cigarette ash. She looked back toward the door and found what she expected – a bloated corpse, crumpled against the door. She moved closer for a better look at the dead man. He was naked, except for his tighty whities. “Dead guy,” she called back through the crack of the door. “A day or so, looks like.”
What she did not mention was the man’s face. Someone had gone to work on it with something sharp. His lips were sliced into dozens of vertical ribbons, like a fringed curtain hanging over the yellow stumps of his rotted teeth. His nose was shattered and splayed open; reformed into an ornate, almost floral pattern. Above that, someone had cracked the man’s head open, smashing one big hole in his face that encompassed most of his forehead and both of his eye sockets. They had grouped both of his eyes in that hole, so they stared up at Savannah, blind with the milky white veil of death.
There was a third eye, or something supposed to represent one, a pale orb the color of bone. Savannah did not know what it was – a knuckle; maybe a vertebral knob; something like that. It did not matter. The man was dead, and the message was clear. This place belonged to the conjured girls and the psychopaths who followed them.
Outside, Rashad screamed. The old men kicked up a fuss, too. Savannah shoved her face against the gap between the door and its frame. There were children out there; a crowd of them, moving toward Rashad with clumsy steps. More spilled out from the gaps between the trailers – a horde of slack-jawed, pint-sized shamblers. A noose hung from each of their necks.
Savannah thought about the little boy, hanging from the tree outside of Hotlanta Wings. These were all sacrifices to raise the conjured girls. “Get in the cars! Get the hell out of here!”
She yanked at the door, but the body was still in the way. She could hear the children, chanting together, a singsong, schoolyard sound. The words they said were ancient.
Savannah shoved her face against the gap again. She could see the children’s faces, their mouths drooling blood, their eyes wide and unblinking. “Get in the cars!” Savannah shouted again, but her words were swallowed up by the chorus of sacrificed children.
Savannah dragged the body away from the door by its feet, then she went back to the door and yanked on it. It was jammed. Odinga had smashed the door and it was hung up on the frame.
Outside, the children moved toward Rashad. Carter burst out of the Ford Country Squire, then ran toward his father. One of the children shuffled close to him.
Carter’s hand flashed out, knocking the child backward several feet. The child landed hard on his ass. Blood streamed out of the boy’s forehead, blanketing his eyes and cheeks with startling red.
Savannah pulled on the door for all she was worth, muscles bulging in her forearms and shoulders. The door bent, but would not open. “Give me a hand, Free Willy,” Savannah shouted.
That got Odinga’s attention. He turned back to the door, then slammed his bulk against it. Savannah flew back as the big man’s mass smashed the door right off its hinges. Savannah landed flat on her back on top of the corpse. “Goddamn,” she groaned.
Papa Marcel pushed Rashad and Carter into the trailer, then limped in behind them. “Savannah, we got a pwoblèm.”
“No duh.” Savannah leapt from the floor, then slid the door to the side. She joined Papa Marcel at the doorway while Jimmy Odinga and Rashad muttered in quiet conversation next to the couch.
There were a few dozen children outside the trailer, from toddlers to tweens. They all barked the same horrible words – a rhythmic chant that split their lips and chipped their teeth and was doing god knew what to their insides. Throwing around the old words was a good way to end up dead if you did not know what you were doing. The children did not seem to care; their faces were blank masks of brown flesh streaked with blood that flowed over their chins and down their necks.
“They’re not alive,” Rashad said. “There’s something in them that’s alive, but they aren’t.”
The mob of children was ten feet from the door.
“We have to get this door back up.” Savannah said.
Savannah grabbed the aluminum door then rammed it into the bent frame. It sort of stuck there, with big gaps in some spaces and a tight fit in others. “Couch!” Savannah commanded with a snap of her fingers.
Jimmy Odinga grabbed the couch with one hand then swung it around, upending it and slamming it up against the door.
Savannah raised an eyebrow at the display of strength.
“Spirit provides,” the druid responded.
The children hit the door, but not very hard. They were determined, but clumsy and weak. Savannah could see them through the gap around the couch, piling up against the door in a tangle of loose bodies and floppy limbs. “How long are these things going to keep at it?”
Rashad shrugged. “I can’t feel what’s commanding them. It’s just a blank. Could be a few minutes. Could be days.”
“Great.” Savannah did not wait to discuss the matter with the room. She drew her revolver then rammed it against the nearest child’s forehead. She looked into the little boy’s eyes and saw the triple pupils. She squeezed the trigger.
The little boy fell to the ground in a smoking heap. A little girl behind him fell too, her arm had been blown off by the same bullet that had hollowed the boy’s head.
Savannah watched, mouth dry, as something stirred inside the boys skull, jerking this way and that. Then it raised its head and opened its fanged mouth and let out a shrill shriek.
One by one, the children opened their mouths and uglier heads wormed their way out into the light.
Mole rats. Hundreds of them.
Savannah stared at the horror with a tilt of her head. “Well, damn.”
The dogs screamed and ran in circles outside the trailer. Mole rats covered the animals, carving open their hides with curved fangs, burrowing into their flesh.
Savannah swapped her revolver for a broken chair leg, smashing the mole rats down as they tried to force their way through the gaps in the trailer’s door. She felt a strange weakness worm through her muscles, and she could not shake the feeling that there were eyes on her. “Get me a sheet, blanket, something… gotta plug these holes!”
Rashad grabbed the filthy vinyl table cloth off the trailer’s tiny dining table then rushed into the kitchen to grab a handful of steak knives. He unfurled the table cloth as he hurried to Savannah. She took the left corners from him. Together, they threw the vinyl sheet up across the gap between the frame and the bent door. Rashad slammed the steak knives through the corners of the table cloth and through the trailer’s aluminum walls. He bent the handles over at right angles, pinning the cloth in place. The makeshift barrier bulged with vermin.
Savannah grinned at her husband. It felt good to be working with him; comfortable in a way she had never imagined possible. She turned to Odinga and Papa Marcel. “What are you old farts going to do while my husband handles all the real work around here?”
But the old men were already hunkered over the table, leaning on their canes on opposite sides of the flimsy surface. “You oughta take a look at this,” Papa Marcel grumbled.
Savannah left the door under Rashad’s protection. The mole rats filled up the barrier, but they had not figured out how to get into the trailer yet. She could afford a few minutes to look at whatever Papa Marcel wanted her to see.
The top of the table was covered with engraved lines forming patterns that were enough to start a throbbing ache behind Savannah’s eyes from just a brief glance. She had no idea how the old men could stand to study the damned thing. Every time she looked at the design on the table she felt it sinking hooks into her, pulling her along a path that could lead only to madness. “What am I looking at?”
Odinga rapped his cane on the edge of the table, but was careful to keep its silver head from touching the designs. “A blueprint.”
Papa Marcel grunted then spat on the floor. “More like a plan.”
> Savannah took in the bigger picture. She realized she was looking at a map of the SWATS. The two spots where they found the conjured girls were marked with spiraling sigils. There was a third symbol, to the northwest of the other two. Savannah pointed to it, but kept her finger well clear of the table – the designs looked like they had teeth. “Where is that?”
Odinga and Papa Marcel exchanged glances. “Plummer’s Crack.”
Savannah’s stomach sank. “The caverns?”
“We’ve got a problem,” Rashad called from the door.
Savannah snapped her head in Rashad’s direction. The vinyl table cloth no longer bulged. “Where are the mole rats?”
Rashad shrugged. “That’s the problem.”
Savannah dashed over then took a look out the grimy window. The dogs were dead or dying, but there were no mole rats. No mole rats tried to worm, or chew, their way in through the trailer’s front door, either. “This is not good,” Savannah sighed.
Papa Marcel and Odinga were arguing about something at the table. Savannah ignored them. She focused on a sound she could almost hear. The mole rats were not in sight, but she could still hear them somewhere nearby, rustling, crawling. Swarming.
“Get out of the trailer,” Savannah shouted. “Get out of here, now!”
Rashad did not ask any questions. He yanked the knives out of the wall then tossed the tablecloth out of the way. Then he threw his weight against the ragged couch and sent it crashing into the kitchen table. Without the couch to hold it in place, the bent door flopped out of the doorway, but the way out still was not clear.
The lower half of the exit was packed with children’s heads. Their teeth gnashed at the air. Their eyes – empty caverns rimmed with blood; destroyed when the mole rats gnawed their way into the world – seemed to somehow still glare at everyone in the trailer.
Odinga slammed his cane against the floor. “We have to bring this table with us, we cannot just leave it here. The information it holds is too valuable.”
Savannah eyed the dead man in the middle of the floor. He had been a heavy guy, but his gut was ponderous now, swelling with each passing second. Savannah peered into the crater where the man’s forehead used to be. Red eyes glared at her from the gory gloom.
She grabbed the dining room table, careful not to look at its engraved surface or touch the designs, then charged toward the doorway.
The eyeless heads moaned and chewed at the air.
As she closed on them, Savannah could see their teeth – long and sharp, like the needle fangs of the mole rats.
Savannah slammed the flimsy table into the barrier of heads, grunting with disgust as she sent the gnawing faces rolling out into the road. Behind her, she could hear something stretching, straining; about to burst. “Rashad, get something ready for the mole rats.”
She smashed the last of the heads out of the way then carried the table out over the mound of corpses beyond the door. She kicked at the bodies, trying to clear a path, but it was like shoving mud with her toes. For every one she shifted, two more sank into its place. “Everyone out!”
Rashad was the first through the doorway. He ran a wide circle around the vehicles, dragging the toe of his sneaker in the dirt. “Get in the cars,” he said as he worked his fingers in intricate patterns. The shadows around his eyes were so thick Savannah could not see his flesh beneath them.
Carter helped Papa Marcel and Odinga out the door, lending his strong arm for support on the inside while Savannah did the same from the outside. Savannah could see her son’s eyes bulging with fear at the thought of the mole rats catching him. She hoped the boy could get past it someday, but right now he was half-mad with fright.
The old men limped toward the Bentley and the SUV.
Savannah kept an eye on the trailer. “Hobble your asses a little faster unless you want to be mole rat food!”
Rashad saw the old men coming and shouted, “Don’t break the circle.”
There was a hollow thud from inside the trailer, the sound of something wet and sticky bursting. Something red and syrupy splashed over the grimy windows, then a gout of it spurted out of the doorway, unfurling like a great, bloody tongue.
Half the spew caught Carter as he was leaving the trailer, soaking him in gore. He tripped over the corpses then fell, his hand inches from one of the gnashing heads.
Screeches poured out of the trailer, the cries of a million mole rats swarming, ready to attack.
The ruckus kicked Carter into gear. He scrambled toward the cars.
A geyser of hungry mole rats poured out of the trailer after him.
Rashad muttered something, his eyes rolling in their sockets, his tongue darting and flicking in the air like a serpent’s.
Odinga grabbed Carter by the arm then hoisted the boy into the circle, pulling him up and over the mystical barrier with the ease of a mother lifting a child.
The mole rats were less than a yard away. Savannah closed her eyes and waited for the fangs.
The ground quivered. Savannah choked as the invisible hand of a pressure wave squeezed the air out of her lungs.
A wall of wind erupted from Rashad’s circle, blowing outward, kicking up gravel and dirt before it. The wind tore mole rats apart, shredding them with raw force. It destroyed the trailers, as well, splitting them open and scattering their contents. Corpses of dogs and zombified children sailed through the air.
Odinga and Papa Marcel both eyed Rashad with equal parts suspicion and respect. Savannah found herself looking at her husband in much the same way.
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I’m dope like that!”
Rashad winked at Savannah. Blood leaked from his ears, and red tears ran from the corners of his eyes. He staggered, caught himself on Carter’s shoulder for a moment, and then passed out.
***
Rashad drove slower as they left the trailer park than he had on the way in. His fainting spell had not lasted long, but Savannah watched the Ford Country Squire for any signs her husband might be having trouble. She had never seen anything like that before; the casual way he bent the world to his will made Savannah’s skin crawl… AND it made her proud. She could not reconcile the two feelings.
Papa Marcel pointed ahead of the station wagon, at something across the road. “What’s up dere? My eyes ain’ what they oughta be.”
Savannah slowed the SUV, then stopped it twenty yards behind Rashad’s wagon, which sat in the road in front of a pair of patrol cars. “Phil’s pigs,” Savannah muttered. “This’ll be fun.”
She tucked both pistols in the back of her belt and the revolver in her thigh holster, then she eased out of the Flex. She whispered to Papa Marcel, “Keep your head down.”
“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” Papa Marcel said.
One of the police officers was tapping on Rashad’s window when Savannah reached the wagon. Savannah showed her empty hands, and the officer gave her a curt nod.
The officer leaned back from the car, all his attention on the Root Woman. “Savannah,” he started, as he unsnapped his holster. “Some people want to talk to you.”
Savannah gave the young man a smile. “Did Phil have a change of heart? Did he send y’all to pick me up and finish what he couldn’t?”
The officer grinned. “Not just us. You’re a popular girl these days, Savannah.”
“Yeah,” Savannah said with a smirk. “I’m really feeling the love out here.”
The other officer fumbled with the snaps on his holster. Savannah raised an eyebrow. “One of y’all might get a shot off before I return the favor, but not both of y’all. Why don’t you two get in your cars and drive y’all asses out of here before somebody dies today?”
“We don’t want everyone,” The first officer’s hand slid to the butt of his weapon. “Just you. You come with us, we let everyone else go.”
“Get your cars out of the way.” Savannah’s hands were a blur as she whipped the pistols free of her belt, then aimed them at the officers. “Now!�
�
The first officer swallowed so hard Savannah could hear it from twenty feet away. “Okay, Savannah. Okay!”
The second officer did not wait for his partner to give the order, he jumped back in his car then peeled off. Working for the conjured girls had not made the cops any braver.
“What are you waiting for, pig?” Savannah said to the first officer. She took a step forward. “Get going!”
The officer scurried to his car, hands over his head. “When they come for you and your family, remember we offered you a choice.”
Savannah laughed. “They took my girl; tried to kill us all not a half hour ago. Take your choice and shove it up your ass!”
The cop nodded then opened his car door. “Still.”
“Get your ass out of here!”
The cop sat in his car, staring at Savannah for a long while, deciding his next move.
Savannah kept the pistol aimed at his head.
“Didn’t have to go down like this.” The officer took his hat off, then dropped it on the seat next to him. “People are scared of you. Been scared a long time.”
The officer slammed his door then fired up the cruiser’s engine. He spun the car in reverse, pointed its nose down the road, then hit the gas.
Savannah watched the cop drive away, then crouched to look into Rashad’s window. He rolled it down, and she was struck again by how strong, how vibrant her husband looked. He radiated a vitality Savannah had not seen in years.
A Haunting in the SWATS (The Savannah Swan Files Book 1) Page 25
