The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  At the end of River Road Grant saw a dark cloud waiting for them.

  He slowed, and the car was suddenly surrounded by hornets.

  They rose up from both sides of the road and tore at the car, beating against the windows. Grant gunned the engine, trying to ram through the fog, but it kept pace and now he couldn’t see. Hornets were crawling in through the vent system. Grant braked the car, twisting all the vent valves shut. The few that made it in were already stinging him. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette, jammed it into his mouth and lit it.

  The hornets in the car went dormant as the smoke hit them.

  Grant grabbed the radio and called in: “This is Bill Grant! I need immediate assistance on River Road — repeat—”

  “Is that you, Bill?” came Chip Prohman’s laconic voice. “Did you know there’s an a.p.b. out on you?”

  “What?”

  “Pell Johnson was in a little while ago and talked to the Captain, and they want your hide. Can’t say I blame them, and I got you to thank for doing dispatch duty for three weeks—”

  Grant tried to keep his voice reasonable. “Chip, I’m in big trouble—”

  “I’ll say you are. See you when they get you — you said you’re on River Road?”

  “Never mind, you asshole.”

  Grant turned off the radio, jammed it into its cradle, and gunned the engine.

  He threw on the windshield wipers, which gave him just enough vision to keep going.

  The end of River Road was in sight.

  Miraculously, as he reached it, the hornets left the car in a cloud. He saw them disperse, looking suddenly lost, in his rear view mirror.

  He did sixty, passing cars and leaning on his horn, all the way to the hospital.

  The emergency room entrance was empty when he got there. He braked, tore open both doors on the passenger side, helped the woman out and then pulled the unconscious man out as gently as he could.

  An orderly appeared, and Grant barked at him, “I’m a police officer. Get these two patients taken care of immediately. You should have been called by the police.”

  “Are you detective Grant?” the orderly asked carefully.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “We had a call, but it was to ask you to come with us—”

  Grant pulled his gun and pointed it at the orderly. “Take care of these two, people. Now.”

  Grant saw two Orangefield police cruisers just edging onto the main road a good two blocks away.

  “Shit.”

  Grant holstered his gun, slammed both passenger side doors and ran around to his own side.

  In a moment he had the car in gear and out on the main road.

  To his relief, he saw the two cruisers pull into the hospital.

  He hit the accelerator, tried furiously to think as he pulled away.

  Five minutes later, on a road out of town, his cell phone went off.

  He pulled it out, pushed the TALK button.

  “Hello?” he said curtly, expecting someone from the police station.

  “Detective Grant?” a languid, soft voice said. “This is Kathy Marks.”

  For a moment he went blank. Then he said: “Kathy, are you all right?”

  There was silence which stretched to the point where Grant thought he had lost the connection. Then her voice came back: “I’m tired, detective Grant. I just want to finally sleep.”

  “Kathy—”

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “He’s come back to me. He’s promised to give me everything I want. He’s promised to let me see my mother and father. That’s all I ever really wanted. That and Corrie.”

  “Kathy, don’t do anything until I get there. Promise me—”

  She wasn’t listening. She sounded infinitely tired. “Good-bye, detective. He wants me to say good-bye. I’m so tired. And tell Corrie I loved him more than he ever knew.”

  The line went dead.

  “Damn!”

  Grant dropped the cell phone back into his pocket and hit the wheel in frustration with the flat of his hand. He dug furiously into his pocket and retrieved his notebook, flipping through it with one hand while trying to pay attention to the road ahead of him. In a moment he had located Kathy Marks’s address.

  He made a screeching U-turn, tore back the way he’d come for a half mile, then took a side street named Parsons Road which neatly avoided the middle of town. In five minutes he was into the residential area of Orangefield, and in another minute was on her street.

  Tires squealing, he hard braked in front of her house and leaped out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

  Out of breath, he came up short in the small backyard.

  She was hanging from the single magnificent oak, from a sturdy branch, a spray of newly fallen leaves below her feet, which were suspended a yard off the ground. Her cell phone was nearby.

  A step stool had been kicked over. Her face held the horrid, startled look of the asphyxiated, the dull blank look of surprise when taken-for-granted oxygen is removed.

  Her hands had been tied behind her back, which puzzled Grant.

  There came a sound from the far side of the house which drew Grant’s attention, but then there was a louder one out front. Grant sprinted back around the house to see the car being assaulted by a gang of teenagers dressed in strips of clothing, their faces smeared with chalk-white makeup. They looked drugged.

  One had the rear door of the Taurus open and was trying unsuccessfully to pull Regina out of the car.

  Grant drew his gun and advanced on them, shouting, “Get away from the car.”

  From down the block was a larger group of teens, similarly dressed, some of them with baseball bats.

  The one pulling at the little girl whirled on him and hissed; the other two moved back at the sight of Grant’s weapon but the third dropped Regina and sprang at Grant like a cat.

  Grant hit him with the flat of the gun on the side of the face and he went down.

  The other two continued to back toward the advancing mob, melding into it. There was a growing angry sound coming from it, a low menacing hum like a generator revving up.

  Grant moved to the car and slammed the rear door. He advanced on the front driver’s side, brandishing his weapon.

  Something sailed through the air at him from the middle of the crowd — a baseball bat, which hit the windshield and slid off. Grant climbed into the car and closed and locked the door.

  Another stick flew at the car, hitting the passenger side windshield and making a crack. Now the crowd was rushing at them.

  Grant turned the ignition, geared the car into drive and drove forward.

  With an audible sigh the crowd tried to part, but Grant heard the solid smack of bodies not able to get completely out of the way. A hail of blows rained on the Taurus, and the rear driver’s side window was smashed, then the rear windshield. One of the teens climbed onto the trunk and tried to get purchase on the broken window. Grant gunned the car and the boy slid away, howling.

  Grant hit the accelerator and left the mob behind.

  Again, he thought furiously.

  The barn was open, but Riley Gates’s house had been shut up tight. Grant knew that Riley had relatives somewhere in Minnesota, a sister who had moved to Canada, but none of them had showed up for the funeral or come yet to claim Riley’s possessions.

  Grant hid the Taurus in the barn, going so far as to cover it with hay. It was a bad job, but would have to do.

  He was able to get inside the house by breaking one small window pane and opening a window. He herded his two passengers inside. Neither of them had uttered a word or made a gesture since he had got them into the car. When he told them what he wanted them to do, they nodded slightly and followed his directions.

  He placed them in Riley’s living room, which was spare but had a fireplace.

  Grant patched the window pane he had broken. It was chilly in the house, and Grant soon discovered that the burner had been shut down and the w
ater turned off.

  He soon had both up and running, which was a good thing because he really didn’t want to build a telltale fire.

  The moon, like a huge silver coin, was climbing in the east.

  Grant doubted that Riley would have any trick-or-treaters out here. Just to make sure, he stepped over the rutted long drive leading to the main road and replaced the gate with the CLOSED sign he had opened to get in. He studied the setup from the road — there was nothing to indicate that he was squatting here.

  Thanks, podna, he thought.

  He thought he caught movement out of the corner of his eye out in Riley’s pumpkin patch.

  He stopped, studying the rutted, nearly empty field by moonlight. The only pumpkins left were the rejects, deformed or rotted.

  Grant waited a full minute, scanning the entire field, but saw nothing.

  Must have been a crow.

  He went back to the house, checking his gun as he did so. There had been two extra cartridges in the car, which he now had in his pocket, and a third which he always kept. Along with the cartridge in the 9mm, that made four.

  In the house, he went to Riley’s gun cabinet, searched diligently for the key then ended up hacking off the lock and hasp with a small hatchet he found in the kitchen. Inside there was a shotgun, a .22 rifle and the Chinese version of the AK-47, the latter without ammunition. But there were plenty of shotgun shells, and enough .22 ammo to start — or end — a small war.

  Grant inspected and loaded everything, laying the shotgun and rifle out on a side table together.

  The moon was hovering over the pick-your-own pumpkin field now.

  Something was outlined against it.

  Something moving, flexing.

  As Grant watched, a new figure rose up into sight.

  Could they have been laying down flat in the field, waiting for him to pass? He definitely saw articulated arms and legs.

  The cops from the hospital?

  But if so, where were their cruisers? There had been no vehicles out on the road when he was there.

  Another figure rose, then another.

  Grant’s mouth opened in disbelief.

  Three more rose straight up, and now as a group they began to move toward the house, the sun behind them.

  Grant grabbed the .22, which had a telescopic sight, and looked through it at one of the figures.

  It had the head of an upside-down deformed pumpkin, and a body similar in shape to the creature he had met named John.

  But this one was made all of vines, twisted and gnarled into the shape of human limbs.

  The pumpkin head had a cutout face which flared into burning life — a downturned, grim mouth and bright, too large eyes.

  Grant lowered the rifle. More pumpkin men were rising, their misshaped heads flaring into life as they rose up out of the pumpkin field.

  He turned the rifle scope on a particularly large deformed pumpkin, and watched it twist up off the ground into man-shape, dead vines twirling and shaping underneath it.

  The first wave of the pumpkin army had reached the edge of the field, and moved toward the house.

  One of them stooped to pick up something, a rock. Another now bore a long stick.

  Others, Grant saw, were heading for the barn.

  Grant slid up the window, and aimed through the crosshair sight at the nearest, who glared at him with pure hate.

  He pulled the trigger and the head exploded in a shower of orange pieces.

  The vines underneath the head collapsed and lay still on the ground.

  Grant pulled off two more shots, but the pumpkin men were already learning. One crouched out of his line of sight behind Riley’s pay booth, and a second was running out of his line of sight.

  He was able to hit another and then another, but by now the pumpkins were scattering, splitting into groups and beginning to surround the house.

  “Don’t suppose you could help, Corrie?” Grant said, checking the young man and the girl, who sat quietly, their eyes open and deep, vacant black.

  The field of view in front of Grant was empty, and then he heard a shatter of glass at the rear of the house.

  He ran that way, grabbing the shotgun from the table, and went into Riley’s bedroom just as a second rock came through another window pane. One of the monsters was reaching in to unlock the latch. Grant fired two barrels at it, shattering the window and the pumpkin man at the same time. Grant reloaded as another figure took the first’s place. Grant stepped further into the room and shot it as it tried to snake a vine-like foot through the ragged opening.

  Down the short hall, at the rear of the house, another window broke.

  This is not working.

  Another shatter of glass, this time from the front of the house.

  Grant ran back to the living room in time to see two shattered windows, and pumpkin men climbing through the ragged openings.

  “Corrie! Regina! Come with me!”

  The boy and young girl rose from their chairs and turned toward him.

  Grant dropped the first pumpkin man to climb all the way into the window; from down the hall behind him he heard another and turned in time to hit him with his second shotgun shell. Another appeared behind it from the bedroom and Grant hit it twice with his 9mm, finally cutting its head into chunks of blasted pumpkin.

  He thought of the cellar — then thought better of it — he remembered that there were casement windows down there and decided on the attic, where Riley’s Lionel trains were. There were no windows up there.

  The pull-down stairs were in the hallway. Glancing behind to see that Corrie and the girl were making their way toward him, he ran farther down the hall, locating the pull cord just past Riley’s spare bedroom. He transferred his gun from his right hand to left and yanked it down. The panel stuck, and Grant yanked harder, breaking off the wooden handle from the rope. He jumped and wrapped his wrist around the rope higher up, putting all his weight downward on it.

  It edged downward —

  He heard a sound behind him. He turned to see a pumpkin creature reaching out for him, another behind him between himself and the two young people, who stood mutely at the end of the hall.

  Grant shouted and uncoiled his hand from the rope, switching his 9mm from his left hand back to his right and firing point blank into the pumpkin’s head. It exploded in a shower of pieces. The second pumpkin was moving toward the two young people, and Grant leaped at it, tackling it. Immediately the vines that formed its body began to coil around him like live snakes, collapsing its body to him. He felt the gun being pressured from his hand, and looked directly into the madly grinning face on the pumpkin.

  With all his might, he dropped down on the monster’s head, driving it into the floor.

  With a sickening squashing sound, the head imploded and he was suddenly free as the vines went limp, losing all life.

  Another pumpkin had climbed through Riley’s window, and there were two behind Corrie and the girl.

  Grant shot the first, then sprinted to the young man and girl and pulled them farther up the hallway. He shot over them at the two closest figures, noting that a mob of pumpkin men was now in the living room moving resolutely toward them. He fired a volley of shots into them, hitting and missing. Three went down. Then his gun clicked on empty.

  “Damn.”

  He pulled the empty cartridge out, dove into his pocket for another and jammed it into place. Again he fired a volley. More pumpkin men were climbing through the windows, and now the door was open, letting even more in. Grant had a glimpse through the windows. The front of the house was a sea of pumpkin heads.

  “Corrie, Regina, come on!”

  He turned and ran to the overhead stair panel, dropping another pumpkin man in Riley’s bedroom and then leaping to put his fingers under the wide crack of an opening his efforts had gained him. The panel moved down another inch before his fingers slipped.

  Again he jumped, wrapping his wrist around the cord again, and this time
the entire panel came most of the way down with a creaking groan, almost hitting him. He pulled it the rest of the way and grabbed at the folded ladder, forcing it down.

  “Corrie!”

  The boy was behind him, and Grant herded him onto the ladder and he began to climb.

  Regina had disappeared.

  Grant fired wildly into Riley’s bedroom as he passed, then ran to the end of the hallway.

  Two pumpkin men were trying to carry Regina toward the front of the house. Their vines kept slipping away from her, but they were forming a basket of more and more vines around her, enclosing her completely to move her off.

  Grant hit the first and as his head exploded half the basket dissolved. Another pumpkin man and then another immediately took its place.

  Grant kept firing until the girl was free. She stood in a mass of inert vines.

  “Regina, walk toward me — quickly!”

  The girl did as he was told. Grant covered her with fire, dropping any pumpkin man that came near her, until she finally reached him.

  “Now go to the ladder and climb!” Grant ordered.

  She walked past him and went to the ladder.

  Again Grant was out of ammo. He reached into his pocket for his third and final clip.

  He hammered it home, turning in time to prevent a pumpkin man just leaving Riley’s bedroom from accosting Regina.

  Grant destroyed him, and then was climbing up the ladder after the girl.

  There was a light switch mounted on a bare rafter and Grant flipped it on. The attic flared into light.

  Grant pulled the panel up after him, sealing them off from the lower part of the house.

  Almost immediately there came a dull pounding on the panel as the pumpkin men sought to get up to them.

  To his relief, as Grant had thought, there were no dormers up here, no other entrances. The attic was semi-finished, bare rafters at one end and a beautiful train room at the other. Riley’s train board ran around one entire end of the attic in a U shape. There were miniature towns, one with a painted lake dressed in spring colors on one side and the other dusted with white artificial snow. Two trains, a diesel freight and a line of New York Central passenger cars pulled by a beautiful Hudson steamer, sat on separate tracks waiting to be run, one at each end of the layout. Riley’s other trains were neatly boxed and stacked next to the board.