The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels)

by Jon Land

  Kimberlain had just emerged from cabin 12½ when the rush swung back up the hill toward them.

  “Over there!” Hedda pointed suddenly from just behind the Ferryman. “I see him!”

  The Ferryman swung to follow her gaze. Garth Seckle was standing in the open, an M-203 poised in his hands.

  “Like I said,” Kimberlain promised, “he’s mine.”

  He sped off around the back of the cabins to approach unseen. Still sprinting, he held a lit cigarette against the nozzle at the end of the copper wand. Closing on Tiny Tim, he readied to twist the nozzle, opening the flow of the kerosene. He knew the monster would wait until sufficient targets were gathered before him, knew that would give him the last bit of time he needed.

  He was twenty yards away when, still in motion, he turned the nozzle. The initial gush of flames ignited in a wide burst, then steadied into a narrow stream.

  Tiny Tim had only gotten off two shots from his rifle when the jet of flames found him. Kimberlain had been aiming for Seckle, but most of the flames hit the M-203. Then they seemed to reach outward and catch the monster in their grasp. Seckle was blown backward. Kimberlain turned the nozzle on his still-firing form, but Tiny Tim was already out of range. He darted for the woods with the fire dancing off him.

  The Ferryman turned the nozzle counterclockwise. The jet of flames receded and was gone. He rushed forward in Tiny Tim’s path and passed by the monster’s smoldering M-203 on the ground where he’d dropped it. Hanging over it was the distinct scent of burned hair and flesh.

  “I’ve got you, you bastard,” Kimberlain said out loud to the shape charging up a path leading for the woods. “Now I’ve got you.”

  The Ferryman bolted after him, yanking one of the phosphorus-laden pipe bombs from his belt when he had cleared the length of the tennis courts. He touched the same lit cigarette to its twine fuse, which caught with a sizzle instantly. He rushed forward a few more steps before hurling it into the open area near the woods where Tiny Tim was headed. The pipe bomb exploded with a poof! and a dazzling flash that staggered Seckle. Kimberlain drew another, lit, and hurled it before Tiny Tim could straighten his path again.

  This charge exploded closer to him and doubled him over. For an instant it seemed the hundreds of shards of ruptured plastic had done the job. He seemed almost to fall, his shape lost to the darkness of the storm. Kimberlain knelt to ready his second marble-loaded black iron pipe. He was flirting at the edge of its range now, but Seckle was an almost stationary target, too much to resist. Kimberlain lit the fuse and sighted down the pipe at a target now thirty yards away. Ready for the recoil’s hard thump this time, he barely buckled as the marbles tore outward in a blast of orange smoke.

  On target. Dead on.

  Ears ringing, the Ferryman felt the certainty of triumph. The distance proved too great for his makeshift bazooka, though, and he saw the blast had instead shredded the base of a small tree not more than a yard to Seckle’s left.

  Not pausing to bemoan the miss, Kimberlain discarded the smoking pipe and followed Tiny Tim into the woods.

  Garth Seckle had not known such pain in many years, not since the night The Caretakers had come and blown a chunk of his foot away. It seemed to be happening all over again, here on this night that should have belonged to him. The bulk of the damage had been done to his shoulders and back. He could feel his singed flesh bubbling and puckering. The pain was incredible, soothed slightly by the pounding rain soaking his exposed skin.

  Once under cover of the woods, Seckle stripped off the gloves that had also been burned through by Kimberlain’s makeshift flamethrower. His night-vision goggles, meanwhile, had been shattered by flying plastic from the pair of blinding explosions that followed him to the woods. But he could still see, and there seemed to be no damage to his eyes. Part of his scalp, though, had been ravaged by the blasts, and a section of his face was burned raw from cheek to temple.

  He gasped as he tore the goggles off and tossed them aside. He grabbed for his canteen and dumped its contents upon his face and scalp. The relief was fleeting. The pain would not go away. He would have to use it like he used everything else. He started moving again, mired in the awareness that the Ferryman was closing fast from his rear, sure to have followed him into the woods.

  What were these weapons the Ferryman was using?

  Tiny Tim found himself wondering what else Kimberlain might have brought. He willed himself calm as he sank deeper into the forest. He reminded himself whatever Kimberlain might possess, his own arsenal remained infinitely superior. His task now was to lure the Ferryman into an area where he could use his weapons to finish him once and for all. He had a pair of machine guns left and plenty of grenades. Pistols on both hips and assorted other extras.

  He felt himself grow even calmer. The resort still belonged to him. The families weren’t going anywhere in this storm, and help was at least fifteen minutes away. An eternity for him to work.

  Meanwhile, the families would be gathering in the lodge, secure in their numbers. That gave Tiny Tim hope. He could still win here tonight. He could still accomplish what he came to do.

  But first Kimberlain.

  The Ferryman entered the woods tentatively. He could tell from the weight of the tank on his back that his initial attack had consumed half its contents. Not that it mattered. Lacking the element of surprise, and in the confined space of the woods, the flamethrower’s effectiveness would be negated. He still had both of Chalmers’s pipe bombs in his possession, but finding the time to light their fuses under the circumstances seemed unlikely. Kimberlain reached behind him and pulled the twelve-gauge pump forward. The homemade weapons had taken him as far as they could. Seckle was wounded, in pain and perhaps fleeing. At the same time, though, like a wounded animal he was probably even more dangerous.

  Thunder rumbled and a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky. His heart jumped. The woods looked alive, every shadow and tree sure to be Tiny Tim ready to fire. He could very easily be walking into a trap, but in one sense anyway that was a victory, for so long as Seckle was out here battling him, the families were safe.

  Kimberlain edged on. He heard a branch snap directly ahead of him and threw himself to the ground. The move saved his life. A fusillade of bullets burned the air above him, chewing bark from trees where his head and chest had just been. He moved behind the cover of a huge pine tree and fired three rounds from his shotgun in the direction the bullets had come from.

  Thump …

  Kimberlain had heard the sound of a grenade striking soft ground often enough to know what was coming. He threw himself forward through the air to escape the reach of the first blast and skirted the second by diving into a small brook. The percussion stunned his ears, but this time he knew enough not to move. Sure enough, the next pair of grenades landed ahead of him, near where he would have been had he continued his motion. Water cascaded upward in fountainlike jets, splashing him.

  Kimberlain gauged the angle the grenades had been lobbed from and lit his last two pipe bombs in rapid succession. He threw them within a second of each other, intending to enclose the target area rather than strike it directly, making Seckle expose himself so the remaining shells in his shotgun might finish the job. The bright flashes came almost simultaneously. No screams came in their wake, and no further fire either.

  Where was Seckle?

  A wild spray of machine-gun fire came his way, and Kimberlain dashed from the brook to the cover of a tree to avoid it. The bullets were still coming when he touched his lighter to the fuse of his last black iron pipe. The orange flame sped down the coil. Kimberlain spun out from the tree’s cover with the homemade, marble-loaded bazooka leveled toward the origin of the still-raging barrage.

  BOOM!

  Impact jolted him backward as the marbles shot out. There was an echoing thud as they reached their target, and Kimberlain let himself hope Tiny Tim was finished at last. He came to his feet slowly and charged the area, his shotgun leading the way. He
dared Seckle’s bullets to take him and was certain he had won when they didn’t.

  The results of his latest blast showed him otherwise.

  Neat chunks had been chiseled out of a tree that broke in two separate directions five feet up. Wedged through the center and strung to one of the rising branches were the remnants of a machine gun that had been blown apart by his blast. Tiny Tim had tied it into place and looped a support around its trigger so it would fire of its own accord, creating the illusion of a man behind it.

  Garth Seckle was gone, circling around back toward the resort where only a wounded Hedda was there to stand between him and the families.

  The clamor of heavy feet was pounding past Hedda, and she heard the repeated shout of instructions.

  “The lodge! Everyone to the lodge!”

  She caught a glimpse of a ranger in a storm-battered khaki uniform rushing about with revolver raised, shouting instructions to the panicked throngs and evacuating those still in their cabins. Everywhere families in soaked and muddied bedclothes rushed toward the combination rec center and cafeteria.

  Hedda sat inside the screened-in porch, hidden from the activity. Cold and soaked, she shivered down her pain and cradled herself with her arms. She fought with the wind to distinguish accurately the sounds of the Ferryman’s battle with Tiny Tim from those of the storm. Strange how she could only see him as the Ferryman and not Kimberlain, for to accept him as Kimberlain was to accept the tragic truth of her own past. He was no more her brother than the boy she had saved was her son. In name, perhaps, but nothing else.

  “Move! Let’s go! Move!”

  And the parade of the desperate and terrified continued. She wanted to raise herself up to the screen in the hope of catching a glimpse of the boy again, in order to preserve some impression of him.

  “The lodge, I said! The lodge!”

  Gathering the guests together in a common area was the best way to ease their panic and protect them. An obvious strategy under such dire circumstances, one anybody would have chosen.

  Hedda stiffened. If it was obvious to her, then surely it would have been obvious to Tiny Tim as well. He would have made a stop in the lodge prior to setting out on his night’s work. Hedda pushed herself to her feet and stepped back out into the storm. She moved along as quickly as she could, falling into the wet muck only to regain her feet, muddied and even more desperate. She grabbed for the shotgun strung around her back and used it as a crutch to push herself along through the storm.

  “Find a seat!” the ranger yelled through a bullhorn. “Please, find a seat and quiet down… . We’ve got to find out if any families or family members are missing. We need to know who’s missing. Help is on the way,” he finished.

  The resort guests settled down as best they could. Mingling amid them, trying to restore calm, were the resort managers. They lived somewhat apart on the huge property, and had been called by the ranger via walkie-talkie.

  Flashlights and a few powerful lanterns provided the sole light; a soft murmur and some scattered sobs were the only sounds that moved through the terrified crowd. Injuries, miraculously none serious, were inventoried and checked. Those with any medical experience at all moved about with what bandages and supplies they had been able to find in the resort’s health center. Rumors of exactly what had transpired were flying, but those who truly knew were quiet.

  The ranger and resort personnel were doing their utmost to avoid additional panic. That task became nearly impossible when one of the lodge doors crashed open. A woman, harried and soaked by the storm, with blood leaking from her shoulder, charged in with rifle in hand.

  Hedda would have preferred to use a reasonable approach on the crowd, but she realized that only a shock would achieve her goal in the limited time frame available. A brief check underneath the building had revealed the final element of Tiny Tim’s plan to her.

  “Everyone out!” she screamed above the diminishing wails. “Everyone out now!” When they failed to cooperate, she brought the shotgun down level with her waist and rotated it about threateningly. “I said move! Get out of here and run, as far from the building as you can!”

  The ranger was fumbling for his pistol when she turned the shotgun on him.

  “Don’t! Listen to me,” she screamed to all who could hear her. “This building’s going to explode. Now get out!”

  After all that had transpired in the past few minutes, no one chose to doubt her. The next moment saw fresh panic overcome the lodge’s inhabitants. Mad rushes were launched on every door. Screens were punched out and became emergency exit routes. The ranger pushed his way toward her.

  “Who the fuck are—”

  “Propane,” Hedda told him. “He opened the propane tanks in the kitchen.”

  “I don’t smell propane.”

  “Because it’s collecting underneath the building. He crawled under, do you hear me? He crawled under and worked the lines outside. If he comes back here and ignites it, there won’t be a building left.”

  A mixture of fear and uncertainty filled the ranger’s face. “How come you know so much?”

  “I came here to stop him.”

  “Jesus Christ, I don’t even know if we had everyone in here.”

  “Just help me get everyone out.”

  Garth Seckle emerged horrified from the woods in the back of the southern cluster of cabins. The vantage point allowed him a clear enough view of the lodge to see it was being evacuated, his would-be victims slipping from his grasp.

  It couldn’t be true! It couldn’t!

  They scattered in all directions into the night, gone from the central gathering point where he had planned to finish them off. Seckle bellowed with rage as he rushed across the open area between the cabins. He pulled a grenade from his belt and yanked the pin out, each motion searing him with fresh agony. The reality of his failure brought the pain of his wounds beyond the point of denial. But the blast could help ease the pain, vanquish it even if enough of his victims were caught in the explosion. He was still running when he lobbed the grenade long and straight for the lodge, the seconds counted in his mind. It thumped to the ground and then rolled on beneath the building’s underside.

  Garth Seckle dove to the ground and covered his already scorched head.

  The lodge exploded in a massive fireball, the loosed propane catching all at once. The flames leapt outward, the storm’s fury unable to douse them. Shards of wood flew everywhere, and for a moment Tiny Tim let himself think the night had been salvaged. But the intensity of blast had forced the vast majority of the debris straight upward. He listened for screams of pain and death, but heard not a single one. He gazed at the flaming carcass of the lodge, and all he felt was empty and beaten. Beaten by both the Ferryman and the woman.

  With Kimberlain left behind in the woods, only she could have evacuated the lodge.

  But he could make her pay for that. Seckle had one submachine gun left, an Uzi, and he leveled it before him. Most of the resort guests were fleeing toward the waterfront. If Hedda’s son was among them, he would die there.

  Tiny Tim counted his remaining grenades and threw himself into a rush.

  “My God,” Kimberlain muttered as he helped Hedda to her feet in the flaming shadow of the lodge. “You got them out. Jesus, you got them out.”

  She nodded halfheartedly. “But Tiny Tim’s still loose. Somewhere.”

  The sounds of panic rose up through the night from the direction of the waterfront. “He likes that sound,” Kimberlain told her. “That’s where he’ll go.”

  The Ferryman had seen the explosion when he was halfway between the woods and the lodge. Instinctively he dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms. Dread anticipation drove him forward into the clearing where he found Hedda.

  “They’ll box themselves in down there,” Hedda warned. “No place else to run from him.”

  “No place for him to run this time, either. I’ll cut down to the lake through the woods. Either I’ll
run into Seckle, or I’ll be waiting when he gets there.”

  “While I approach from the rear after you,” Hedda followed.

  “A cross fire,” Kimberlain acknowledged, steadying his twelve-gauge. “Let’s go.”

  The number of those who had stupidly gathered in the confined space of the waterfront surprised Tiny Tim. Several had climbed into rowboats or canoes, even kayaks and smaller playaks, to make their escape. But most simply huddled in small groups, figuring with the lodge blown up this night of terror must be over.

  How wrong they were. Seckle still had five hand grenades and three clips for his Uzi just to demonstrate that. He knew he had to salvage something if this night was to be embraced again. He wanted to lie in his field, staring wide-eyed at the stars, and relive this visit. With nothing to relive, the very essence of his life was gone. He had to accomplish something to savor.

  Tiny Tim pulled the pin from one of his grenades with his teeth and drew his arm backward. In the instant it started in motion, a loud report burned his ears and a segment of the tree nearest him exploded. A second blast struck him in the chest and blew him backward, some of the shotgun pellets penetrating flesh where his Kevlar had already been shredded. The grenade he’d been palming slipped from his grip and rolled slightly down the hill.

  “Down! Everybody down!” he heard a booming voice cry out. Seckle took cover behind a tree at the start of the woods just before the explosion shook the beach.

  The explosion sent the victims he had missed scurrying in all directions again. A young boy dashed near, not seeing him, pausing to catch his breath. Whimpering, sobbing. Alone.

  Might this be? … Could this be? …

  Close enough. Tiny Tim reached out and snared him in a bear-claw hand. Seckle let him scream and keep screaming, Uzi pressed against his head.

  “Kimberlain!” he yelled through burned, bleeding lips. “I’ve got him, Kimberlain!”

  Hedda watched it all transpire from Seckle’s left flank, forty feet away with the boy between the monster and her. Was it her son? She couldn’t see well enough to tell; she couldn’t have been sure even if she could have seen him up close. With a decent rifle, even pistol, she could take Seckle out, but not with a shotgun. No chance.