STONEWALL’S LAST STAND
1
CHANCELLORSVILLE, VIRGINIA
MAY 2, 1863
“If I look back and don’t see your face looking the enemy in the eye, I will put a bullet in the back of your head myself.” General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate States looked over his men. They were lean and poorly dressed in patchwork gray uniforms. They carried an array of rifles, revolvers, and sabres. No two were alike, but the men were unified by the thing that bonds all soldiers—fear.
And that could be dangerous.
Disastrous.
A single man running in the wrong direction could undo an army. That was why Stonewall dealt with them in the harshest terms possible. Their enemy would be no less merciful, and Jackson wasn’t about to let a bunch of Yankees take potshots at his soldiers. But he couldn’t just make threats. He’d lose their respect. So he submitted to his own authority and declared, “Same goes for me. You see me running away from the enemy with fear in my eyes, it means I’m no longer your general.” His index finger tapped his forehead. “Put a bullet. Right here.”
He walked a few feet, eyes on the mud squelching up from under his boots. After several days of rain, the sun had returned with an unseasonable vengeance, pulling a good portion of that moisture back into the air, making it thick and sticky. There wasn’t a part of his uniform that wasn’t clinging to his body. He used the irritation to fuel his final words.
“Come morning we’re going to give those Yanks a fight they won’t soon forget. Next we speak, good ol’ General Joseph Hooker’s army will be retreating up the Potomac and straight into the Devil’s asshole!”
The exhausted men rallied, letting out a rousing whoop. It spread through the ranks, a wave of sound rolling back through men who couldn’t even hear the words. Didn’t matter. His speech would be repeated in whispers throughout the night. Everyone would have their own version of the Devil’s asshole speech. As long as they weren’t thinking about their impending deaths.
“Now, eat well and sleep hard. We wake with the sun.” Stonewall gave a wave of his hand and turned his back to glare at the dark woods separating his army from the open field, where many of these men would die. They had flanked Hooker’s men. The plan laid out by General Lee was audacious, but perfect. But Stonewall wasn’t about to commit his men to a battle without first seeing the battlefield for himself.
“Goose,” he said, and the man was at his side a heartbeat later.
“We’re ready, sir.”
Goose knew the drill. He and his men were the best Stonewall had seen. Ruthless, skilled with both musket and blade, and sneaky. Before the war, he had little doubt that these were hard men. Criminals, most likely, and not just because they looked the part. They also protected their names, choosing nicknames for themselves. Including Goose. But on the field of battle, all men were equal, and the four gentlemen standing with Goose had more than made up for any past grievances.
Without another word, the six men strode toward the treeline, Goose by Stonewall’s side, the others close behind, weapons at the ready. In the thick woods, Goose took the lead.
The spring’s new leaf growth was already thick this far south, blocking what little light the stars provided. The moon, nowhere to be seen, had retreated like their enemies soon would. Goose paused, listening, his ears sharp. Wind shushed a course through the trees. It was followed by the hiss of falling water, shed from the shaken limbs. The rest of the night was still. Even the birds seemed to have fled.
There are killers in the forest, Stonewall thought. The birds were wise to leave.
“Lantern?” Goose asked.
“Just one,” Stonewall said. “Keep the light small.”
“Cotton,” Goose said. The tall, wiry man slunk up next to them and crouched. After a few seconds of tinkering and a half-dozen whispered curses, a light flared, and then shrank down to almost nothing. But in the pitch-black night, it was plenty, and it would keep them from tripping over obstacles. Kept low, the light would be hard to spot, but a man falling on his face, that could be detected in any direction by anyone with a pair of ears.
“Remember…” Stonewall said, taking the lantern so the men could carry their weapons.
“We move in silence, observe the enemy and kill only when necessary,” Goose said.
Stonewall couldn’t see the man, but was sure he was showing his tooth-gapped grin.
“Or when fun,” Cotton added and the others chuckled.
“Save that for the morning,” Stonewall said, and then struck out into the forest’s depths, eager to complete their mission, and if he was honest, hoping to drop a few Union soldiers before the night was over.
Twenty minutes later, he got his chance.
2
“I’m sweatier than the underside of Johnny Boy’s momma’s teat in mid-July,” Cracker Jack whispered. He was the largest of Stonewall’s recon team and said pretty much anything that came to mind, without fear of reprisal. Not because the others feared him—bullets paid no mind to muscles—but because this was how men such as these bonded.
“My momma’s milk is the sweetest moonshine south of the Mason Dixie,” Johnny Boy replied. He was Cracker Jack’s opposite in every way. Short, fast, and sneaky. And while Cracker Jack was most likely to strangle an enemy barehanded, Johnny Boy could stick a man a dozen times and bleed him out in half the time. He was also shameless.
Stonewall winced at the image. He’d never met Johnny Boy’s mother, and reckoned he wouldn’t want to, but his imagination never conjured a pleasant image whenever she and her various secretions came up in conversation. Johnny had a weasel’s face and severely blemished skin. His mother was either a saint for copulating with a similarly built man, or equally unsightly.
“Quiet,” Goose said.
At first, Stonewall thought Goose was just keeping the men in line. While on recon missions with this crew, Stonewall let his subordinate rein the men in. Kept their rebellious urges from targeting the general. But the stillness of Goose’s body and the raised rifle in his hands meant he had actually heard something.
The men ducked down, breath held. Listening.
After a minute of nothing, Gator asked, “Sure you done heard sumptin’?” Gator had lived in the swamps of Florida. Didn’t mind the heat, or the moisture. Seemed born and bred for it. Not much of anything scared him, not even, he claimed, “the twenty-foot gator I done killed with a hatchet.” He wore the beast’s long tooth around his neck as proof. Aside from his smell, Gator’s weakness was his impatience.
He stood from their hiding place behind a thick mound of brush, shrugging his hairy arm out of Goose’s cautionary grasp. He spun in a circle, eying the darkness. “Ain’t nothin’ out dere.”
And then, a voice. “Momma’s milk.”
The garbled words were distant, but unmistakable. Someone had been close enough to hear their conversation and was now mocking them with the words.
Without needing to be ordered, the men readied their rifles and waited for orders. Stonewall gave Goose a nod and the man stood. “Two one two behind me. You know the drill.”
Goose moved out from hiding, leaning forward, making himself a smaller target. Cotton and Cracker Jack followed, then Stonewall, and finally Johnny Boy and Gator. While Stonewall was willing to share the dangers of battle and recon with his men, he was no fool. His life and mind were far more important to the cause than those he served with. He would fight with them, but at times like this, any bullets flying toward them would most likely find another’s body, before they found his.
“Low and tight,” Goose said and then struck out toward the voice’s source, guided by the oil lamp’s paltry illumination. They were headed toward a trap, no doubt, but Stonewall needed to see what was hiding in these woods before he sent his army marching through it at first light.
The skill with which his men snuck through the darkness made him proud. The Yankees might know a handful of Confederate boys had ventured into the woods, but they’d never see them coming.
Goose paused to listen again, but it wasn’t necessary. The Union men were announcing their presence with a boldly lit torch. There were three of them. All of them talking at once. Women in a kitchen, talking pies. But laced with fear and something worse, typically reserved for when a battle reached its end—desperation.
“Sumpin’s got ’em all riled,” Gator observed.
“Likely they know who we are by now,” Cracker Jack said.
While Goose and his men had a reputation among the Confederate ranks, it was doubtful that reputation had reached the Union, primarily because when they encountered the enemy, they killed them.
Dead men don’t tell stories.
“It ain’t us,” Goose said. “Listen.”
In the silence that followed, the enemy’s panicked voices slipped out of the night.
“I’m telling you, I looked right through ’im.”
“His eyes glowed. The Devil himself lives in these woods.”
“Wasn’t the Devil. And it wasn’t a beast.” This voice remained calm. “It was a man. In the dark. Now, collect yourselves.”
Just bits and pieces of conversation, but it was enough to start building a picture—one that Stonewall did not like. Not one little bit.
“You want us to believe a lone man slaughtered nine of our own without a single shot fired? Without a body left behind?”
These men had encountered an enemy in the woods, and it wasn’t his men. That meant that the Union either had turncoat problems, which would be beneficial, or there was a band of lawless killers in the woods. That could be a problem, unless they joined his band of lawless killers. But the truth wouldn’t be revealed until he questioned them.
“I want them alive,” Stonewall said to disappointed faces.
“Damn,” Cotton said.
“After they’ve opened their mouths, you can open their guts,” Stonewall said. The rules of war said these men should be taken captive, alive, but they’d just be three more mouths taking food from his men. He pointed at Cotton, Johnny Boy, and Cracker Jack. “Flank them. When the light flares, well, you know what to do.”
3
Explosive light filled the night, illuminating the surrounding forest with a suddenness that could wreak havoc with a man’s vision. Combined with the sharp shattering sound of the lantern striking the ground, it was disorienting, so much so that Stonewall’s eyes betrayed him. Despite being ready for the brilliant display, he saw a shadow dancing in the trees above, as though alive, and before the light lost its powers, he swore the shadow was looking back at him.
Stonewall’s hand went to the revolver on his hip, but before he could drop it, a shrill scream pulled his attention back to the Union soldiers.
“Good Lord, it’s come back for us!” Stonewall knew it was a man screaming, but it sounded closer to a coyote’s shriek. The cry was followed by a cacophony of gunshots. An angry buzz stung his cheek and something heavy tackled him to the ground.
Remembering the living shadow, Stonewall struggled against the weight until Goose’s voice was warm in his ear. “It’s me, General.”
A different kind of shouting followed the barrage. Men begging for mercy while others demanded submission. Stonewall noted the annoyance in Goose’s voice as his subordinate helped him up. “Trying to remind yourself that you’re not invincible?”
“I’m fine,” Stonewall said, brushing the previous autumn’s soggy fallen leaves from his jacket.
“You’re bleeding.” Goose poked Stonewall’s cheek, the touch eliciting a hiss of pain. “Going to need a stitch or two.”
Any other man who spoke to Stonewall in such a manner would find himself on the frontlines of the coming day’s battle, but Goose had earned the right. In the midst of this war, he was the closest thing Stonewall had to a friend. While he commiserated with esteemed men like Robert E. Lee, he couldn’t just be himself. But Goose truly knew Stonewall. His fears about the war, his love for his wife Mary and for his newborn daughter Julia. He wanted little more than to be with them now, safe in their house, warm by a fire. It was why he fought with such ferocity. The sooner this war ended, the sooner he would return to them.
“The scar will suit me,” Stonewall said, and then he turned his attention back to the small clearing, which had gone silent. He stepped past the fading light with Goose and Gator, the two men wary for trouble. They were miles from both Union and Confederate camps, but there was no telling who else lurked in the woods this night.
The three Union soldiers were on their knees, bleeding from fresh wounds, no doubt inflicted by Cotton, Johnny Boy, and Cracker Jack. The men had been savaged, but Stonewall was impressed his men hadn’t killed one of them. Then again, most of their wounds appeared to be at least a few hours old, the blood dried and the bruises a deep purple.
Only one of the three looked up at his approach. The man was young, mustached, and wearing an officer’s jacket. Their leader, and by the looks of him, a coward. His hands trembled. His eyes twitched. And then, eye contact. The man’s face showed recognition, and then something Stonewall was not expecting—relief.
“S-Stonewall?” the man asked. “Thank God.”
A Union soldier thanking the good Lord for the appearance of General Stonewall Jackson the night before a battle was set to be fought, or on any night for that matter, should have been unheard of. Yet here Stonewall stood, looking down at a bloodied Union man all but ready to kiss his feet, like he was Jesus Christ himself.
“Name and rank, son,” Stonewall said.
“Captain Jason Ames, sir.”
Sir, Stonewall noted. The respect wasn’t just customary, it was sincere. But was that the fear talking or was it possible that his reputation as a cunning leader had earned the North’s awe? If that was true, it boded well for the morning’s confrontation. There was no weaker brew than an army steeped in fear.
“What are you doing out here, Captain Ames?” Stonewall asked.
Cotton drew a fist back, ready to clout the man, but Stonewall stopped him with a raised hand. He saw no resistance in the captain’s eyes.
The captain searched the trees surrounding them. The two men with them hadn’t stopped doing the same since Stonewall first looked upon them. Stonewall followed the man’s gaze up to the branches. Where the shadows had danced. The lantern’s spilled oil still burned, but the light was fading. They had just minutes before complete darkness returned.
“Captain Ames?” Goose prompted, keeping the conversation on track.
“S-same as you, I suppose. Scouting the—”
“Look at him,” the man to Ames’s right said. He was pointing at Stonewall, who hadn’t yet looked away from the trees. “He’s seen it, too.”
Stonewall glared at the man. “Seen what?”
“Was a demon,” the man said. “Lucifer himself.”
The second nameless Union man added, “Bigger than the lot of you. Faster too. Glowing eyes. Killed nine men. We’re all that’s left.”
“Ain’t no surprise there,” Johnny Boy said. “You Billy Yanks got about as much brains as you do—”
“Johnny,” Stonewall said, silencing the man. Then, “Captain. You telling the same story?”
“It was a man,” Ames said. “But he was alone. And big.”
“And he killed nine of your men?” Stonewall’s raised eyebrow revealed the statement was a question rather than a repetition of facts.
“Yes. Sir.”
“And where are they? The bodies?”
“Taken,” Ames said, eyes turning to the ground.
“Where?”
The captain turned his head upward. The trees were cloaked in darkness once more, the oil nearly burned out. Ames pointed up.
“No way it’s jus’ one man,” Gator said. “I reckon we—”
A sound like a woodpecker pecking on a tree trunk thumped out of the canopy overhead. Ames and his men flinched at the sound. They’d clearly heard it before, and associated it with nothing good. “That him?”
Ames nodded. “We should leave.”
“Only place you’re going is a Confederate prison,” Goose said.
There were few horrors on Earth that could compare to the deplorable conditions prisoners of war faced in the South. Starvation was rampant. The only thing that stopped its slow degradation of a man was cannibalism. These men had to know as much. Conditions in the North couldn’t be any better. But Ames and his men seemed almost eager to meet this fate.
When a second woodpecker beat out a rhythm just above their heads, Stonewall’s entire crew reacted, raising rifles toward the darkness above.
“Can’t see shit,” Cotton said.
“Ain’t notin’ up dare,” Gator added, but he kept his rifle raised.
Goose began stomping out the last of the flames covering the ground behind them.
“Stop,” Ames said. “All you’re doing is blinding us.”
Goose kept stomping. “A man can’t shoot what he can’t see.”
“He…” Ames shook his head. “…sees just fine in the dark.”
“Doesn’t sound like a man to me,” Stonewall noted, one hand on his holstered revolver, the other on his sheathed sabre. “Goose, light another lamp.”
“Are you taking us back?” one of the Union men asked, his voice full of hope.
But Stonewall shook his head. “Not yet. We still have a mission to complete.”
“We’ll tell you everything you want to know,” the second Union soldier said.
“Ain’t no way to know if you’re telling the truth,” Goose said.
All three men seemed to melt from the inside out.
“Aww,” Cracker Jack said. “Maybe we can convince ol’ Johnny Boy’s mom to wet nurse ’em back to—”
A crunch of leaves and twigs, at ground level, slipped out of the dark woods. Rifles shifted toward the sound. Stonewall’s men were putting on a good show, but he could sense they were spooked. Hell, he was spooked. But no one was leaving this forest until he knew what kind of danger awaited his army.
“Show yourself!” Goose shouted. He raised his rifle and looked back to Stonewall, who gave a nod. “Near as I can tell you’ve done us a favor. Come out now, and we can part ways as friends. You make me wait any longer than a count of five… well… I think what’s comin’ is pretty self-explanatory.”
Gator, Johnny Boy, and Cracker Jack stood on either side of Goose, a regular firing squad. Cotton stood behind their prisoners, no doubt hoping the men would attempt to flee.
Stonewall counted down in his head. When he reached zero, Goose followed through on his promise, firing toward the sound’s source. The others did likewise, shooting and reloading, again and again, striking trees and brush, but failing to elicit a shout of human pain.
“Hold,” Goose said, lowering his rifle. He turned toward Johnny Boy. “Go see.”
To his credit, Johnny Boy snuck away, disappearing into the woods. He would soon return with news of their failure, or success.
Stonewall flinched when something bumped into the back of his leg. He looked down to see Ames, shuffling backward, a look of abject horror carved into his face. “Cotton,” Stonewall said, about to chew the man out, but then he turned around.
Cotton stood at an angle, dangling over one of the Union men. What looked like a harpoon jutted out from his chest, through the Union soldier’s head and into the earth. As the life leaked out of him, Cotton’s eyes met Stonewall’s, pleading.
“Goose,” Stonewall said, drew his pistol and shot Cotton in the forehead.
The moment his men spun around and caught sight of the horror, the harpoon withdrew, tugging the Union man’s head against Cotton’s chest.
Goose aimed his weapon at the pair of dead men. “What in tarnation…”
“Dare a line out da back,” Gator said. “Somebody goin’ fishin’.”
As though to prove Gator’s point, the pair of dead men were yanked forward, and then up. Into the trees. Where the shadows danced, and where someone continued the hunt he had begun with Ames’s men.
4
“Bejabbers!” Cracker Jack shouted, as the skewered men flew up into the night. He spoke over the top of his raised rifle, looking for a target but finding nothing. Whatever had killed and taken the men was impossible to see, but it could be heard, crashing through the branches, moving away. “What kinda man could pull two heavy fellas up into the trees like that?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you!” the nameless Union man shouted, his voice cracking with panic. “It’s the Devil himself, swooping down on us like a roaring lion. Eating our souls!” When he leapt to his feet and bolted, no one stopped him, and Stonewall didn’t ask them to. Ames had all the intel he needed, and the runner was clearly a coward who would be of no use in the fight that was surely to come.
But when the man shrieked, and then gurgled in pain, all eyes turned toward him. He stumbled backward out of the dark, hands on his throat, blood oozing from between his fingers.
Cracker Jack and Gator raised their weapons and would have opened fire had it not been for Stonewall’s raised hand and shout. “Hold!”
A moment after the command, Johnny Boy stepped into the clearing, wiping his blade clean on the bleeding man’s arm. The Union soldier then succumbed to his slit neck, fell to his knees and then on his face. When Johnny Boy looked up, he saw the looks in his comrades’ eyes. Then he froze. “What did I miss? Where’s Cotton?”
“Up dare,” Gator said, nodding his head up. “In dem trees.”
“General,” Goose said, doing his best to hide his fear. “Your orders?”
The only reason Goose would be asking for new orders was if he truly believed Stonewall’s last orders—to reconnoiter the enemy camp—to be folly. Given Cotton’s sudden demise and strange disappearance, Stonewall had come to agree with Ames. They were being hunted, but not by the Devil. By men. And men could be killed.
Stonewall pointed to Ames. “Give him a weapon.”
Goose looked stunned and then complied, returning the man’s belt, which held a holstered pistol and a sabre.
“Fight with us tonight,” Stonewall said, “and if you survive, you have my word that you will be returned to your men unharmed, following the morning’s battle.”
After Ames had tightened the belt, he accepted a rifle with a nod. “I’m with you.”
“Actually,” Stonewall said. “We’re with you. Lead the way.”
Ames’s eyes went wide. “T-to the Union encampment?”
“That is why we’re here, and the cause for which my man gave his life. I intend to see it through, no matter the cost.”
“Even if it’s your own life?” Ames asked.
“This war is going to kill me sooner or later, and I’ll be damned if it happens while I’m running from a fight.” As he spoke the words, Stonewall’s stomach soured. He didn’t want to die. Had a wife and newborn daughter to live for. And he loved them more than a man at war could admit without going AWOL. But he wasn’t a coward, and if he died fighting the enemy, then at least his wife and child would be proud of him. He pointed north. “Now… after you.”
Gator took the lead with Ames, holding a torch that blazed brightly in the night. If darkness didn’t hinder the men attacking them, he wasn’t about to face them blind. Goose walked beside Stonewall, while Johnny Boy and Cracker Jack brought up the rear.
They walked just ten minutes in silence before Gator took hold of Ames and yanked him to a stop. “Smell sumpin’.” He raised his nose to the air. Sniffed. “Dead men.”
“Is this the way you came?” Goose asked. “Where your men died?”
Ames shook his head.
“Proceed,” Stonewall said. “Slowly.”
Gator crept forward just another twenty feet, Ames hanging back a few steps, and then he stopped again. “Body up ahead.”
The group tightened and proceeded together. The details were hard to make out in the dancing firelight, but they resolved with each step closer. Two bodies hung upside down, dangling from the trees above, naked of clothing… and skin. Their heads and spines had been torn away. Fluids tapped a rhythm on the forest floor, leaking from the opened bodies.
“Holee shee-it,” Cracker Jack said.
“That Cotton?” Johnny Boy asked, tapping his rifle’s muzzle against the open wound in the corpse’s chest, right where Cotton had been run through.
Cracker Jack gave a nod. “Looks like it.”
Stonewall knew what the others were thinking, because he had the very same questions. How could their heads and spines be ripped out? How could two men be stripped of their clothing and skin inside of ten minutes and hung, directly in their path? It didn’t seem possible.
It didn’t seem human.
The woodpecker returned, taunting them from the trees. Leaves shook overhead. From another direction, the voice: “Momma’s milk.” More shaking leaves. With every new sound, the group shifted their aim, waiting for a target.
He’s playing with us, Stonewall thought. He glanced at Ames, who passed him a look that said, You should have listened to me.
Stonewall didn’t argue.
A sound like wood crackling in a fire was followed by a whoosh that Stonewall heard, and felt. Something sailed past him and struck Cracker Jack. The big man was lifted off the ground and slapped against Cotton’s corpse. As Cracker Jack’s voice rose up in a scream, a crisscross of lines appeared on his face, squeezing the side of his head, and then cutting into it. Blood erupted from the conjoined wounds. His clothing fell away, small squares of neatly cut fabric revealing the same crisscross wounds all over his body. He was ensnared by a tightening net, squeezing his body against Cotton’s.
As Cracker Jack’s scream reached fever pitch, Stonewall drew his pistol once more and shot the man in the head. “I am getting tired of shootin’ my own men,” he shouted. “Show yourself, like a man. I want to know who’s killing me before I die.”
Stonewall had no intention of dying, but he couldn’t very well fight someone he couldn’t see. He hoped the taunt would do the trick.
It didn’t, but then Johnny Boy whispered, “See him. His eyes at least. Watchin’ us.” He raised his rifle, looking over the sights, then he turned hard left and fired. The rifle’s report was followed by an angry roar. The sound of it made Stonewall doubt his resolve once more. The roar, like the physical feats they’d seen performed that night, wasn’t nearly human.
5
“Got that sombitch!” Johnny Boy shouted, as the branches overhead shook. Then he flinched, raised a hand to his cheek and smeared his fingers across it. They came away wet and luminous green, like he’d smeared firefly guts across his skin. “What the fu—?”
Johnny Boy’s confusion—and body—were cut short by a spinning metal disc. It came and went in a whoosh, leaving the stricken man still and silent. Then he fell to his knees, and the impact loosened his severed head. Blood seeped from the wound and allowed the head to slide free and thump to the ground in time with his body.
Gator, unfazed by the recent violence, crouched down by Johnny Boy’s still confused face. He didn’t even flinch when Johnny Boy blinked. He just swiped his finger through the green smear. Smelled it. Tasted it. “Dat blood.”
Stonewall slowly drew his pistol. He’d lost three men in under twenty minutes. Johnny Boy had managed to wound their adversary, but the bright green blood confirmed what Ames’s men believed, and what Stonewall had begun to fear. They weren’t being hunted by a man, or even by a group of men. It was that Devil himself that’d come for Stonewall Jackson. “Lord Jesus,” he said, praying aloud as he did before every battle, “see us through this trial. Give us the strength of Samson and wisdom of Solomon. Guide us through these woods to safety and spare our lives. Your will be—”
Stonewall stopped. He finished every prayer the same way, ‘Your will be done.’ But God’s will was a tricky thing. It might be for the greater good, far outside the grasp of mortal men, but it didn’t always line up with human desires, even those of good Christians. So, instead, he said, “Please don’t let the Devil kill me. Amen.”
Finished with the prayer, he realized his compatriots were staring at him, Goose whispering his name. His real name. “Thomas.” Nothing more needed to be said. It was time to go. Goose just needed a direction.
Stonewall turned to Ames. “Closer to the Union lines?”
Ames gave a nod. “By a few miles.”
“I have your word that we will be returned safely to the Confederacy come first light?”
A second nod. “On my life.”
“Lead the way. Fast as you can.”
They ran through the night, guided by Ames’s sense of direction and a lone torch. Just ten minutes on, Stonewall’s lungs begged for respite, but he didn’t believe, not for a moment, that the hunter had given up—certainly not after being wounded.
Ames stopped, hands on knees, chest heaving as he caught his breath. Before Stonewall could smack some sense into the man and get him moving again, the hunter bellowed in pain. The roar sounded similar to a man having a bullet pried from his body. It was wasting no time tending to the wound. He had little doubt it would pick up their trail soon enough, but at least the noise spurred Ames back to running.
After another ten minutes, their pace slowed considerably, but they didn’t stop. Stonewall felt a surge of hope. The forest up ahead was framed by a dull light. A clearing. The Union forces wouldn’t be too far beyond.
Gator must have seen this, too, because he picked up the pace and said, “Almost dare!”
He hit full speed in five steps. Then came to an abrupt halt, as though he’d run into a wall… that wasn’t there.
Tiny streaks of what looked like lightning crackled from the point of impact, moving up and down, revealing an immense and inhuman form.
Gator fell back, rolled head over heels, and returned to his feet in a crouch. He looked up at their revealed enemy: “Is a gator man.” He drew a long knife from his hip. “Like me.”
The fearless alligator hunter lunged, blade swinging in a wide arc. The Devil reached out and caught Gator’s face in its palm, but the man managed to complete his strike, swiping the knife across its midsection. The blade didn’t sink deeply enough to eviscerate the beast, but it drew more luminous blood.
Whether or not the creature had even noticed the wound, Stonewall couldn’t tell. While much of its reptilian-skinned body was exposed, it also wore a strange kind of armor, which included a sinister-looking helmet, or at least, what Stonewall hoped was a helmet. He had never seen or imagined anything so horrible in all his life, but he wasn’t yet hopeless. This creature could be injured, and that meant—he hoped—that it could be killed.
With a shout muffled by the creature’s large, clawed hand wrapped around his head, Gator drew his knife back, preparing to thrust it into the thing’s gullet. But he never got the chance. The beast twisted its arm, spinning Gator’s head 180 degrees, cracking his neck.
At the sound of Gator’s snapping vertebrae, Goose opened fire, first with his rifle, and then his revolver. Every fired bullet was a perfect headshot. Had he been aiming at a man, there would be little left of his head. But this creature was far from a man, and its silver helmet deflected the barrage, showing only slight dents in the metal.
Goose saved his last round. “It’s like shooting an iron plate.”
The creature turned its glowing eyes toward Goose, as though merely annoyed by his assault. The woodpecker growl made Stonewall’s hair stand on end. It was the only part of his body able to move. Then the creature’s shoulder came to life, as a strange, third appendage, like a malformed arm made of metal, snapped into place. A triangle of red lines cut through the dark, emerging from the side of the creature’s helmet, creating red spots on Goose’s chest.
Goose took aim at the creature’s torso and pulled the trigger just as a burst of bright blue light exploded from its shoulder.
Stonewall flinched away from the light, and the heat it threw off. He looked back in time to see Goose thrown against a tree, his body scorched. The creature stood still, looking down at its wrist, where a crackle of orange light revealed the damage caused by Goose’s final shot.
“Sir,” Goose groaned, reaching up. The front side of his clothes were burned away. His skin was red hot, cracked, bleeding and steaming, like a roast pig. “Give me… your pistol. And go.”
Stonewall didn’t want to leave the man. He’d rather put him out of his misery first, as he had done for Cotton and Cracker Jack. But Goose might be able to buy him precious seconds. He looked up at the sound of rustling leaves. Ames was beating a hasty retreat toward the forest’s edge. Stonewall didn’t know if the man was a coward, or just smart, but he decided it didn’t matter. Running was the only sound option left. He handed his pistol to Goose, who winced, as his raw fingers wrapped around the pistol.
“Go,” Goose said, teeth grinding. “Make it back… to your family.”
Those final words propelled Stonewall after Ames without another word. He followed the faint orange light of Ames’s torch, hoping the man knew where he was going. The clearing loomed brighter ahead.
And then a gunshot rang out.
It was followed by three more.
Two more shots, Stonewall thought. He has two more.
But the only sound that followed was a gut-wrenching scream that somehow seemed louder than the pistol reports. Stonewall stumbled to a stop at the forest’s edge, torn between living and loyalty to the man he had left behind.
Then the Devil screamed at him from the dark woods, and Stonewall sprinted away, running into an open clearing, miles across, where his army would fight, kill, and die the very next morning. And where he suspected he might do the same, before the sun could rise.
6
Out of breath and more afraid than he would ever admit, Stonewall stumbled to a stop in the field’s core. He was surrounded by tall yellowed grass, undulating in the night’s breeze. The stars blazed overhead. Had he been with Mary and Julia, his thoughts would have been on the beauty of the Lord’s creation. Instead, all he could think about was the Devil, set loose to torment him. Like the Biblical Job, but more personal.
He stood in front of the only sign of Ames he had seen since the man fled the forest. The man’s torch stood upright in the field, like a beacon. And it had drawn Stonewall straight toward it, expecting to find Ames resting, or waiting in ambush. But all he found was the torch, casting a thirty foot ring of orange.
He was about to curse Ames when he heard a shushing behind him. Someone, or something, was moving through the grass. He turned slowly, having little doubt about who had followed him into the clearing.
The Devil emerged from the darkness, standing tall and bold. Luminous blood leached out of its sliced stomach and from two fresh bullet wounds, one in its thigh and one in its shoulder. Neither seemed to slow the creature down or cause any discomfort. Either shot might kill a man on the battlefield, from blood loss perhaps, but more likely from infection. He didn’t think either would be a problem for the beast.
Stonewall drew his second pistol. “What are you?”
Three red dots hummed from the creature’s helmet. The weapon on its shoulder targeted him.
The result of a shootout with this creature only had one potential outcome, Stonewall realized. Goose was a better, and faster, shot than Stonewall, and he hadn’t been able to put this creature down. If Stonewall pulled the trigger, his fate would match Goose’s.
Stonewall lifted his sidearm out, and then released it, letting it fall to the grass.
The monster cocked its head to the side, and then relaxed. The three red lights flickered off. With a clucking growl, the Devil unclipped its armor and shed the weapon mounted to its shoulder. Then it loosened the helmet and peeled it away with a hiss of fog.
Stonewall took a step back, as the helmet lowered.
Then four more when he saw its face, stopping only when the torch’s heat licked up his back.
“Lucifer,” Stonewall said. “In the flesh…” He drew his sabre, the long, polished blade glowing orange in the firelight. Gathering his courage, Stonewall shouted, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to—”
The creature leaned forward, opened its muscular arms wide and bellowed. The hot stinking breath clouded around Stonewall, somehow both hotter and more humid than the thick early summer air.
With a metallic zing, two jagged blades extended from the creature’s right forearm. It reached behind its back with its left hand and withdrew a razor-sharp disc, its fingers looped through five holes. Stonewall recognized this as the weapon that had severed Johnny Boy’s head. It still held a thin coating of his blood.
The monster hunched in an attack position and began circling. Stonewall spun in a slow circle. His blade was longer than the creature’s, but its long arms still gave it a longer reach. And he couldn’t outmuscle it. But perhaps he could outsmart it? The way he saw it, his only hope was to make it strike first, hopefully dodge the blow, leaving the creature overextended and vulnerable. It was the same tactic that guaranteed victory against the Union during the upcoming battle, but would it work against a predator such as this?
After a few moments, the creature stood upright again, its horrible mandibles twitching as its eyes looked Stonewall up and down.
It’s reassessing me, Stonewall thought. It knows I’m trying to outthink it.
With a flick of its wrist, the Devil sent the metal disc soaring off into the dark. The only evidence it hadn’t flown away was the whirring of its blade through the air. The weapon was circling them. When the sound grew suddenly louder, Stonewall ducked with a shout. The blade soared past overhead.
It’s controlling the weapon, Stonewall realized. As long as I’m not fighting, I’m vulnerable. It’s forcing me to engage.
So he did.
Stifling the urge to let out a battle cry, Stonewall lunged forward, stabbing out with the sabre, hoping to sink the blade into the Devil’s chest. But the strike was parried by the creature’s bare hand.
Stonewall swung the blade, adding desperate fury to the strike. The sword sparked off the monster’s armored wrist. He swung again, aiming low for the femoral artery, but he had no idea if the creature could even bleed out. The top half-inch of metal tugged through thick hide, leaving a two-inch slice.
Encouraged by the small victory, Stonewall raised the sabre over his head and hacked down, aiming for the Devil’s shoulder. The sword came to a jarring stop that nearly pulled the weapon from his hands. The demon had caught the sabre between the two blades extending from its wrists. With a quick twist, the sabre was sheared into three pieces and yanked from Stonewall’s hand.
He stumbled back away from the predator. His heel rolled on something hard and he fell to his backside.
Looking down, he saw his pistol resting between his legs. He snatched it up and began a slow crawl backward, away from the torch, and the monster it lit in hellish orange light.
Then a voice rolled over the open field. It was faint, but recognizable as Ames, and clear as the sky above. “Grapeshot!”
Stonewall’s eyes widened. Grapeshot was composed of metal balls, the size of large grapes. When fired from a cannon, they could devastate an advancing infantry or cavalry. With a sudden clarity, Stonewall understood the torch’s purpose. In the dead of night, it was a target, working in the same way as the creature’s red-dotted triangle.
Backing up further, Stonewall adjusted his course, drawing the creature into the fire’s light. Cast in the monster’s shadow, Stonewall waited. The creature stopped again, peering first at Stonewall, and then the flame behind it.
It knows, Stonewall thought. It’s going to move.
He raised the pistol and fired. The bullet struck the creature’s side, snapping its attention back to him. He aimed higher, but heard the familiar whirring blade swooping in from the right. He flopped down onto his back, just as the blade cut through the space where his head had been. He raised his hand to fire again, but the boom that filled the night was much more powerful than his pistol could manage.
Luminous green burst into the night, covering Stonewall from head to toe.
He wiped his eyes clean. The Devil stood above him, its body ravaged by grapeshot, its head shredded into two halves. Stonewall rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding its falling body.
As he stood, a voice.
“You need to go!” Ames, on horseback, was carrying a canister of liquid.
The young captain slid off the horse and handed Stonewall the reins. “I made you a promise I intend to keep. Now go!”
“We can’t let anyone know about this,” Stonewall said. “No one will fight if they think the Devil makes his home here.”
“Taking care of it,” Ames said, sloshing liquid onto the body.
Recognizing the smell of kerosene and the sound of approaching men, Stonewall climbed atop the horse. “If we meet upon the battlefield, I will not hesitate.”
Ames smiled, picking up the torch. “Then I will do my best to avoid you.”
As the Devil’s body was turned into an inferno, Stonewall kicked the horse into action and rode into the night, taking a direct course through the forest where his men had died. He rode without ceasing, feeling the Devil’s claws reaching for him in the dark. He didn’t slow down upon reaching the far side, or when the Confederate lines came into view, or even when he heard men shouting for him to stop.
What stopped him was a bullet, fired from his own men.
Stonewall lay in the grass, looking up at the sky, thinking of his wife and daughter, listening as his men shouted about the glowing green man, and he watched as a streak of light rose up out of the forest and winked up into the stars.
* * *
Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson died May 10, 1863, from an infection caused by a bullet put in him by his own men, upon returning from a reconnaissance mission. The exact reason his men fired on him remains a mystery.