“The policeman?” Carol asked.
Fred nodded. “Followed you over the edge.
“Didn’t fair half as well.
“I found you—or rather, Luke found me, and helped me bring you and Janie back here, to the cabin Vera and I use during deer season.
“Janie regained consciousness shortly before you did, thank goodness.”
“Uh, thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Connor.” Carol swung her feet over the edge of the couch, letting them touch floor. “But we better be getting on our—” Carol stood, and the room reverted to its liquid state.
Fred caught her before she could fall and lowered her onto the couch.
“It’s all right, Carol. Luke told me everything. No one knows you’re here.”
Carol stared up at Fred. She knew the Connors, of course—waved to them if they passed in the Piggly Wiggly or bumped into each other at a ballgame. This was Heartland, after all. Everyone knew everyone else. But her relationship with the Connors had never been anything beyond the typical small town niceties.
“Why are you helping us?”
Fred cleared his throat. Carol watched his Adam’s Apple bob beneath the thin, leathery skin of his neck.
“They drew my Rose’s name back in ’92, and I let them take her. I stood by and watched without lifting a Goddamn finger as those assholes took my baby. That’s what we were supposed to do, after all. As God-fearing members of the church.”
A single tear swelled in Fred’s eye and rolled down his cheek.
“I’ve seen them take countless girls since, but still it’s my Rose’s face I see, each and every time.”
Fred stood and turned to look at Janie. “They ain’t taking you, Janie. Not if I have any say in it.”
A block of wood thudded into the stove, startling Carol and her children.
Vera Connor turned to face them. Her colorless hair was pulled back into a single braid that ran the length of her back. Liver spots were visible at her temples, and dark bags of skin hung beneath her dull green eyes.
She clapped her hands together, dusting them off. “Fire needs more wood.” Wind and rain blew inside as she vanished through the cabin’s sole door.
Janie moved to her mother’s side and flung herself into Carol’s arms. It was something Janie hadn’t done in years. Since she was a little girl. Carol squeezed her daughter to her, reveling in their embrace. In the moment.
Thunder boomed outside, and the moment ended.
Janie pulled away from her mother. Wiped her eyes. “Mom, I know you and Mr. Connor are trying to help me, but this is wrong.”
“Janie, honey—”
“It’s an honor to be chosen.”
Carol shook her head. Tears began to leak from her eyes. “Baby, no. You don’t under—”
A megaphone-amplified voice ripped through the night and its storm.
“This is the Heartland Police. We have you surrounded.”
Light flooded the rain-spattered windows.
“Vera.” Fred shook his head. “Must have called earlier from her mobile. Goddamn that woman.”
~
“Carol, honey.” It was Joe on the megaphone, now. “Just send Janie out to us, and we’ll leave. No one has to get hurt.”
Carol Blevins felt her cheeks go hot with anger. No one but Janie, that is.
Carol sat against the wall beneath one of the cabin’s two windows, an arm draped across her daughter’s shoulders.
Joe’s amplified voice cut through wind, rain, and night to fill the room. “We’ll leave and do what we’ve got to do, tonight. There’s still time. The sheriff’s promised to request leniency for you and Mr. Connor. It shouldn’t be a problem considering his age and your...past.
“And of course, Luke’s just a minor. The church elders won’t blame him.”
Joe stopped talking. Thunder, wind, and rain filled the silence. Then the shriek of megaphone feedback echoed through the night once again.
“Carol, honey, if there was any other way, you know I’d be the first to take it. But this is how it is—how we hold the end times at bay. Try to see this clearly. It’s Janie’s destiny. Just think of all the lives she’ll be saving.”
Lightning flashed, illuminating the night outside, allowing Carol to see the Heartland Police and the shotguns they held.
“It’s time to decide if you’re one of the faithful, K-bear. We’ll give you five minutes, then we’re coming in.”
Fred Connor cursed. “To hell with this.” He duck-walked to a small wooden chest resting in the one-room cabin’s corner. Opened it. Took out a snub-nosed .38. Began loading rounds into the cylinder.
“What are you doing?” Luke asked. The boy hid behind the black iron stove. He shivered in spite of the heat radiating from it.
The .38 loaded, Fred reached up and snatched a .30-06 Springfield rifle from the wall. “Our one advantage is we have who they want—Janie.” Fred stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants. He moved over to Carol and her daughter. “They can threaten all they want, but so long as we hold on to her, they can’t risk storming the place and her getting hurt.”
Janie shook her head. “Uh-uh. This is wrong. I’m not—”
“Quiet, Janie!” Carol hugged her daughter closer, then looked to Fred. “We can’t stay here forever.”
Fred tipped his chin at the cuckoo clocks hanging on the cabin walls. Eleven o’clock was only minutes away. “We can’t stay here at all. Midnight’s coming fast. If Janie’s still here, then, cops or no cops, Old Flathead will find us.”
The wind howled. Thunder boomed.
Carol swallowed hard. “So where does that leave us?”
“You’re not going to like it, Carol, but it’s what has to be done.”
Yet another man telling me what has to be done where my daughter is concerned.
“Three minutes, Carol.” The sheriff was back on the horn, now. “Save everyone the trouble, and send Janie on out.”
A thin stream of air pressed its way through Carol’s lips. “What’s your plan, Fred?”
“Like I said, it’s Janie they want. They can’t risk her safety, but we can’t keep her here, either. So we’ve got to get her out of Heartland. Someone has to take Janie to my truck—at gunpoint.”
“Are you freaking crazy?” Thunder punctuated Janie’s words.
“If she tries to bolt,” Fred said, “the person doing it has to have the strength to hold on to her. So I reckon it needs to be me.”
“I’ll come with you,” Carol said. “They won’t hurt Luke. Like Joe said, he’s just a minor.”
Fred shook his head. “If one of them happens to get a hold of you, then we’re in a hostage-for-hostage stand-off.”
“Then they can have me.”
Fred sighed. “Carol, I know from your father you can shoot. The best thing you can do for Janie and me is cover us from a window.” He held the .30-06 out to Carol. “It’s already loaded, a round chambered. All you have to do is release the safety and pull the trigger.”
She sighed in resignation and took the rifle. “You should head north. Old Flathead might be reluctant to enter another beast’s territory.
“My thoughts, exactly,” Fred said. “We can meet up some place we both know that’s not too conspicuous.
“You know the old hospital in Red Bank? Off the Morrison Springs exit?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll head for it. Meet you in the—”
Janie lunged forward, shoving Fred where he crouched and bowling him over.
“Janie, no!” Carol leaped at Janie and caught her ankle. Janie stumbled but kept her feet. She kicked away her mother’s hand. The follow-through of her heel connected, and Carol went down. Then Janie was through the door. Wind slammed it flush against the cabin wall, clearing a path for the storm to blow inside.
Carol could only watch, helpless, as Joe enveloped their daughter in his arms and ushered her into the back of a police car.
Fred’s back appeared i
n Carol’s field of vision. The old man sprinted out the cabin door, the .38 held before him. The boom of shotgun blasts joined that of the thunder, and he went down.
The cuckoo clocks went off, and Carol screamed.
The din of noise was eclipsed by a sound like the eruption of Hell itself.
Carol rolled just in time to see the cabin collapse on top of her.
~
Carol Blevins stood, every muscle in her body aching as ceiling tiles and pieces of broken lumber rolled off of her to join the wreckage littering the ground.
Shove the pain down. Just like the depression. Shove it down.
The storm at large was over. The rain now fell as a drizzle. The smell of wet forest hung in the air. And something else.
Something that stank of sewage and river bottom. The stench of Old Flathead’s passing—his musk.
Carol’s eyes adjusted to the night, and she caught sight of Fred Connor’s Springfield among the debris. She snatched up the rifle and hung it over her shoulder by its strap.
Only then did she see her son, Luke. He knelt beside Fred Connor’s Ford pickup, cradling its owner in his arms. The old man was still alive, though Carol failed to see how. Blood poured from multiple shotgun wounds lining his torso as he hyperventilated, trying to fill lungs no longer capable of holding air.
“He’s not going to make it, is he, Mom?” Luke asked.
A moment pregnant with silence passed. Carol knelt and slipped a hand inside the old man’s jeans pocket. When she withdrew, she clutched a set of keys.
“Stay with him, Luke. Give him what comfort you can. I’ve got to get Janie. I’ll be back when I have her.”
Carol opened the truck’s driver-side door. Got inside. Slipped off the Springfield. Propped it against the passenger seat.
“I love you, son.”
Luke didn’t answer.
Carol closed the door, found the truck key, and turned the engine over. Moments later, she was speeding down the side of Colburn Town Mountain, heading for the rock quarry where Old Flathead had first appeared. It was where the ceremony would be held—where it was always held.
She reached the foot of the mountain and hydroplaned out onto Route 72. Ten minutes later, she was passing under the interstate. Five minutes after that, she was fishtailing off Battle Creek Lane onto the gravel road that led up to the quarry.
Half way up the hillside, she cut the truck’s lights and engine, not wanting to alert those who would be gathered in the quarry to her presence.
She grabbed the rifle and hopped out of the truck, taking off for the hilltop in a dead run. When she got there, she threw herself down among a copse of pines and caught a few gulps of air, the sound of her heartbeats thudding in her ears.
Below her lay the quarry. The entire population of Heartland lined its ever descending tiers of earth. The crowd stood in silence, watching and waiting as the chants of the church elders reverberated from one face of cleaved rock to another.
Carol sighted the rifle. Through the scope, she found the ring of Heartland police standing guard around the elders. Joe was among them. Samantha Davis stood behind him and to his left, Betty Womack to his right.
Carol tracked the rifle and the black-encased circle of reality before her moved to reveal the elders themselves. The hoods of their ornate robes concealed their faces, but Carol knew well enough who they were: Pastor Roberts. Judge Powers. Coach Green. And Doctor Adcock.
Janie stood between them and the lake filling the quarry bottom. Her scratches had been bandaged, and a wreath of flowers rode in her hair. She wore a simple white dress that the rain had adhered to her young woman’s body.
“Oh, baby.”
Carol watched Janie fall to the ground as something emerged from the quarry lake. A stench like a beached whale weeks in the sun hit Carol in the face, and she jerked her head up from the rifle to see Old Flathead rising out of the water, one story at a time.
His sloping head was a giant, grotesque version of that of a catfish. Teeth like spears lined his cavernous mouth, and spiked barbels jutted in every direction from his nostrils and chin. Spines the size of light poles protruded from a dorsal fin that began at his head and continued down his humped back. His body—the length of it Carol could see cresting above the water—was covered in bony plates the color of ash. Carol saw enormous pink gill filaments peeking out from behind the spiked plates on either side of the beast’s neck.
Worst of all were his eyes. His left rolled continuously in its socket, searching, full of malevolent intelligence and all too human. His right was dead. A set of claw marks the size of field furrows interrupted the plates surrounding it on either side, a battle scar from some long ago fight with another beast of the apocalypse.
Old Flathead rolled a shoulder, and a gargantuan, webbed claw came to rest next to Janie on the lakeshore.
Janie began to scream.
Carol’s life with her daughter flashed before her mind’s eye in reverse, beginning with the tragic events of the night and ending with the first time she’d held her daughter in the hospital. What a beautiful baby Janie had been. So tiny. So innocent. So vulnerable. Completely at the mercy of the ways of the world.
This horrible world.
“Let it end.”
For Janie’s sake. For that of all the girls who came before her and all those who would follow.
Carol sighted her rifle. “Forgive me, Janie. Your mommy loves you.”
Carol squeezed the rifle’s trigger, and a shot rang out in the night, eclipsing Janie’s cries.
Carol watched through the scope as her daughter collapsed, the life gone out of her.
Old Flathead roared, the bony plates at his neck expanding like sails to reveal his gills in full. His bellow shook the earth and transformed the people of Heartland into a frightened, screaming mob. They tried to run, but the quarry held them trapped.
Devil’s Cap Brawl
Edward M. Erdelac
Joe Blas was so called because his papist upbringing in Drom, County Tipperary, had given him a knack for devising the most ingenious blasphemies anyone on either side of the Sierras had ever heard.
He blew hot air into the cold red palms of his hands and turned that coarse and inventive tongue against Chow Lan, the agent for the forty coolies under his charge.
“Jesus Christ’s holey hands an’ feet! What d’you mean they’re scared to blast? We’ve blown though every goddamned cliff and mountain since Dutch Flat with no issue. What’s different about this one?”
Chow Lan’s job was to act as liaison between the red-in-the-face Irish riding boss and his aforementioned forty countrymen, who made up the spearhead of the work gang Charles Crocker had hired on to get the Central Pacific Railroad into Utah by 1867. He divvied up their paychecks, keeping a customary cut of it for himself, placed orders with the gwailo agent for suitable foodstuffs for their cook, and voiced employee concerns when the situation arose.
“Hesutu say mountain home to devil. He say brasting powder free devil. Coolies scared. Say no brast.”
Joe slapped his hat down on his knee.
“That goddamned Indian.”
Hesutu was a halfbreed Shoshone and Miwok who had signed on with them six weeks ago along with a gaggle of Paiutes, specially hired to drive a ten-yoke team of oxen up to the camp. To avoid the troubles their Union Pacific cousins had been having with the Sioux and the Cheyenne, Strobridge, the superintendent of the CP, had signed treaties with the local Sierra tribes and offered them all jobs. Males and females had answered the call.
Though the Celestials were diligent, they were superstitious beasties, even requiring their own joss house in camp with a heathen priest on duty. Joe had found the Indians liked to sport with them from time to time. One joker of a Paiute had convinced the Celestials that a dragon lived in the high country, and they had lost a day convincing them there wasn’t any such thing. Hesutu was a name that had come up again and again in the past few days.
“Look,”
said Joe, rubbing his patchy jaw in exasperation. “You tell them Hesutu talks with a forked tongue, that red serpent. Tell them they better get to work or I’ll send the whole lot of ‘em hoofin’ like sorefooted Israelites back to Sacramento through the snow.”
“I tell, but they no listen,” Chow Lan said.
Joe sighed. He snatched his brass speaking trumpet off the table and slapped his hat back on his head. He shoved Chow Lan aside and went out into the cold air.
They were fifteen miles west of Cisco, high up in the Sierras. Last year they’d been delayed in blasting by an early snow. Word had come down to his lowly ear from Charles Crocker himself; no such setbacks this time around. The line was to be open from Sacramento to Cisco by December and to the far end of Devil’s Cap summit by the same time next year. They had three and a half months to get there, and neither mountain nor the buckskin hoodoo tales of any damned Indian was to retard their progress.
Joe saw the young Chinee priest, barefoot in the snow, doing the same weird, slow dance he did every morning outside the crude joss house. He looked like an only child play fighting, but underwater, turning and bending, throwing an occasional sluggish punch or a ridiculously high kick. Only his queue-less, shaven head distinguished him as a priest; he wore the same patchy blue loose clothes all the coolies wore. There was an air of ease and self-assurance about him that annoyed Joe, but he wasn’t some fat, soft handed parson.
He did his fair share of work. He brewed tea for the workers all day, kept the big forty gallon barrel the men drank from brimming, and was even known to fill in for a man struck sick on the gangs now and again, so he wouldn’t lose his place. The heathens respected him, bowing to him when they saw him pass, and at night he directed their prayers up to Buddha or wherever with his droning chants. Mainly, he stayed quiet and out of the way, which Joe liked. He’d been at Wilson’s Ranch when they’d arrived at the beginning of the year and had volunteered with them, solely to see to their spiritual wellbeing. He figured the priest had some angle on the side, fleecing the coolies out of their fantan money, or dealing opium, though he had never seen him pass the collection plate.
It was a two hundred foot walk through a tunnel of snow from the camp to the work gang. Walking that tunnel made Joe nervous. Due to the blasting, snowslides were not infrequent, and had carried off whole gangs of men. In most cases their bodies hadn’t been found. The avalanche that claimed them also made their only graves.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 21
