Diggs smacked Brendan on his shoulder, jarring him awake in his seat.
“I’m not paying you to sleep.”
Brendan rubbed his eyes and greeted the dawning sunlight.
“Well, now I can finally see something. Sometimes you get tired looking at nothing.” Brendan viewed the empty sitting room. “Where is everyone?”
“Probably waking up,” said Diggs, disheveled in the formal attire and top hat he’d worn the day prior. “I sent Lyle and Franklin out early to see if they could turn up anything.”
“Huh, I didn’t hear them leave.”
“Really? Now why would that be?”
“Sorry, Mister Diggs.” Brendan hastily resumed his job and glanced through the shutter while Diggs walked upstairs to roust the other men. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh what?” Diggs turned to Brendan, who stiffened in his chair, rigid and alert, deconstructing what he’d seen.
“I think it’s easier to open the shutters and show you.” Brendan didn’t wait for a go-ahead and pushed open the panels. Diggs gave Brendan an odd look as he approached the window.
“My Lord.” Diggs rested his hands on the sill. “It’s not possible.”
Brendan snagged his crutch, propped himself up and lurched out the front door, trailed by Diggs, who flicked his Derringer into his palm. Brendan drew his Colt.
They kept their distance from the clawed dirt trail. Brendan and Diggs followed it from the window’s base to where it originated: Toby Jenkins’s grave. Both men exchanged mystified glances, waiting for the other to take the first step. Diggs blinked and circuitously approached the disturbed plot.
“Where’s the shovel?” It wasn’t a question so much as a demand.
“Dunno—I didn’t dig it,” Brendan said.
“Get the other men. Right now.”
Brendan turned to the house, screaming variations of “Wake up” and “Get your asses out here!” He turned to Diggs. “Didn’t you have someone in the horse pen watching the barn?”
Diggs surveyed the paddock while opening the swivel gate. The horses grazed in its north side. Diggs kept alert for horse dung as he walked and saw one of the railroad men slouched against a tree with low-hanging branches. Diggs aimed and fired his Derringer, the bullet buried into the bark a foot above the man’s head, causing him to flail his arms and legs.
“Your presence is requested!” Diggs sneered and returned to Brendan, and gave orders to the sleepyhead when he reported for duty.
“Name?” Diggs said.
“Edward.” The man panted.
“Edward, find a shovel in the barn and dig through this grave.”
He fled and returned to furiously fling dirt out of the plot. By the time he finished digging deep enough to see what wasn’t there, the trio had been joined by the Clement, two deputies, and the three remaining railroad workers.
Edward rammed the shovel into the loose soil a final time—and hit something.
“It’s metal.” Edward ignored the men and focused on his work, now curious himself about why Toby Jenkins’s body had vanished.
He jabbed the object with the scoop and found a spot where he could fish it out of the dirt.
“It’s a shovel blade,” he said.
Deputy Bruce Hughes squatted and retrieved the iron piece, finding no trace of wood in its empty metal shaft.
“You wanna see it?” he asked Diggs.
“No. Does it look old?”
“I ain’t an archeologist, but I don’t think so. I mean, it ain’t rusted and it don’t look funny from being in the dirt that long.”
“There was a broken handle in the barn,” Edward said. “Now we know why. Must’ve snapped it on a rock.”
“But why leave the blade and keep the handle?” Brendan said.
Hughes spotted something slick and glistening through the dirt. He used the oversized trowel to lift a piece of meat that dangled halfway off the blade.
“You think it’s an organ? Like they took out his liver, or something?” Insects infested the meat.
“It would appear so,” Diggs said. “Leave it.”
Hughes let the festering thing slide off the blade back into the earth.
“Who are these guys, Mister Diggs?” Brendan couldn’t hide his fear. “Why didn’t they come back to the barn like you said they would?”
Lyle raced the wagon down the path to Toby’s front door, eager to show Diggs his bruised catch. He steered the rig to where the men had gathered. Lyle turned and climbed into the bed from the driver’s seat, lowered the gate, and kicked Noah Chandler out and onto the ground. The weakened lawman grunted in pain when he hit.
Franklin remained seated, his head bowed, ignoring the other men.
“Time to get up, boy.” Lyle again booted Noah in the gut. “I can see you’re awake. Let’s have some fun.”
“Lyle, a second of your time.” Diggs explained the situation loud enough so that Franklin could hear. Still, the big man remained somber and unmoving.
“Well, we know they steal dead bodies, right?” Lyle said. “Maybe they don’t differentiate between their friends and enemies, like with the Klan and the scalawags. Think they’re gonna set Jenkins on fire like they did Culliver?”
“They took my wife.” Noah, lying on his side with his back to the men, strained to get it all out. “They took my son too. And Toby’s wife and child and two other people.”
“You’re just saying that to throw us off,” Lyle snapped. “You know full well where your kin’s at. In fact, that reminds me—Franklin, go fetch those branding irons from the barn.”
“Edward will do it.” Diggs looked at the trembling railroad man who stared at the grave. “Won’t you?”
It broke Edward’s concentration. He dropped the shovel and returned to the barn. The men heard the fumbling of metal objects, and Edward appeared with a lone iron. The rod was tipped with TJ.
“Toby Jenkins,” Lyle said. “That’ll look nice on your belly, won’t it? Edward, get a fire going, I don’t care how.”
Edward found a box of safety matches that Jenkins kept on the fireplace mantel, took some logs and hay from the barn, and lit the pile not far from Toby’s grave.
It took twenty minutes of steady fire for the brand to glow red.
“Lyle, I appreciate you wanting to extract information from this man, but aren’t you the least bit concerned about Jenkins being gone?” Diggs never sounded so deferential to a man he considered his lesser.
“Just trying to scare us.” Lyle rotated the brand from side to side to make certain all ends would scorch Noah’s flesh. “Like they did with that Culliver guy. They’re trying to send a message.”
“Then they’re sending it very effectively,” Diggs said.
“Why ain’t they attacked us yet, then?” Lyle finally looked at Diggs. “I mean, from what you were saying they could’ve killed Edward out in the field and nobody would’ve known.”
“Toby Jenkins crawled up to my window,” Brendan said.
“No, he did not. Psychological warfare, that’s all it is.” Lyle commanded two railroad men, Peter and Max, to hold Noah. “The sooner we find out where that nigger woman’s at, the sooner we have a bargaining chip.”
“You gonna let this happen, Sheriff Clement?” Noah said. “So you can retire early, is that it?”
Clement’s cheeks flushed. He felt all eyes on him. “If it were up to me I’d put you out of your misery now, Noah. No sense in making you suffer.”
“And that’s where the sheriff’s wrong,” Lyle said. “Gotta dot our ‘i’s and cross our ‘t’s before we hand this boy over to the maggots.”
Lyle placed the iron handle down, allowing the brand to continue heating, and ripped open Noah’s shirt.
“Look at that scar, boys.” Lyle grinned while the other men grimaced upon seeing Noah’s chest wound.
“That’s a humdinger, ain’t it, Chandler?” Lyle squatted and glared at Noah. “The bitch of it is this: I remember making it.”
Noah squinted and then came the reckoning.
“Yeah, I could’ve killed you years ago had your big brother not convinced me to be a softie. I’d have stuck that bayonet through your windpipe and moved on to the next Yankee. But no. Your brother was looking out for you. And for what? So one of your compatriots could blow off his head? What a damn shame.”
Noah continued his fruitless attempt break free.
“You just need to know that the man who could’ve killed you on that battlefield all those years ago is gonna kill you today. And when I’m done, I’m gonna find your wife, rape her, and put a bullet in her head. And your little boy? I’ll leave him out in the woods by himself. One night ought to do it.”
Noah lunged at Lyle but couldn’t break free of Peter and Max, who forced Noah to his knees.
“And you know I’ll do it,” Lyle taunted. “But you’re gonna hurt first. You’re gonna be begging for it to end.”
Noah exhaled and let his body go limp. He’d save his strength to meet the pain of the brand.
“Or I can be magnanimous. Tell me where the woman is, and when we find her and have her, you’ll get a bullet in the back of the head. You won’t know what hit you.”
Noah glowered. “I told you they took her.”
“Bullshit.” Lyle slapped his face. “If they took her, why didn’t they go to the Army?! They’re working for her just as much as Toby Jenkins, right?! She could’ve gone to the Sheriff’s Office too. Riskier? Sure. But they didn’t do either and had plenty of time. Right, Bruce?”
“Nobody showed when I was there with Preston,” the deputy answered. “I checked in with the Army too. Asked the commander how everything was going. Nothing out of the norm.”
“If I was Sarah Jenkins, I’d want deputies and soldiers overrunning this place, looking for the men who killed her husband.” Lyle grabbed Noah’s face. “So where are they?”
“Don’t know.” He wriggled free of Lyle’s grip and spat in his eye.
“Uh, Lyle, let’s say those fellers did stash the Jenkins lady and whoever the hell else in some safe house,” Brendan said as Lyle wiped gunk from his eye. “Why wouldn’t they then go to the sheriff’s office to get help?”
Lyle didn’t have an answer. But Noah did.
“Because they don’t want anyone interrupting what they plan to do to you all.” Noah saw scared men surrounding him. “Maybe they left me alone so I could be bait for the rats, and now here y’all are, out in broad daylight.”
Lyle grabbed the white-hot branding iron from the fire pit.
Nonplussed, Noah continued. “They want revenge. And they don’t want the law getting in the way.”
“Hold him tight.” Lyle brought back the brand to strike.
Peter and Max braced themselves for Noah to writhe.
“I don’t care what this boy knows,” Lyle said. “He’s had this coming for a while.”
Noah heard the sizzle and felt the swelter of the oncoming brand. He steeled himself, staring at Lyle, hoping to absorb the pain and suppress the screams that would reward his tormenter.
Edward abruptly lurched forward with enough force to kick dirt onto Lyle, who turned to berate him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?!” Lyle shoved Edward by the gut and cussed as he whipped his hand back. Lyle gazed at his palm’s punctured flesh.
Edward’s legs buckled and he fell to his knees, revealing the pitchfork that speared through his back. Three tines beading with blood poked out of his belly. Edward died as his face smashed into the dirt.
“Christ almighty.” Lyle rammed the branding iron back into the fire and reached for his LeMat. Max and Peter released Noah and drew their weapons.
Every able man fired across the lawn into the cornfield where Brendan had fled weeks earlier. Noah, still on his knees, wobbled to the side of the railroad workers, stretching and twisting his knotted wrists. Cornstalks and their floppy leaves snapped and disintegrated as the bullets obliterated them.
“Stop!” Diggs ordered, in part to let the haze of gun smoke dissipate. “Reload. Hughes, go see if we hit anything.”
“Why me?”
“Load your weapon and get into that field, right now!”
Hughes, not wanting to seem the coward he was fast becoming, reloaded his revolver. “Gimme another one. I’m going in double-fisted.”
“Here.” Lyle reached into his belt and handed over Noah’s Colt. “Take this.”
Hughes began his unenviable trek into the cornfield, hoping, praying, he’d see trickles of blood leading to a dead body. No fuss. No muss.
Fat green leaves brushed by his face. Hughes, seeing no trace of anything hostile being hit, walked about ninety feet when halting before a large square hole in the ground.
He crouched and guessed the sides were eight-by-eight inches—wide enough to accept the thick wooden block nestled in soil between the cornstalks. Hughes lowered the revolver into the pit, making contact with nothing. He kept dipping until his shoulder blade prevented him from delving deeper. He withdrew his arm, holstered his gun and reached for the block. He couldn’t say why it intrigued him and felt compelled to fit the block into the hole.
It weighed a ton. He pulled it toward him but it wouldn’t budge. Hughes moved his hand along the smooth surface and realized it wasn’t a block, but a construction beam stretching into the field.
And the cool wood vibrated. Hughes snatched back his hand like he’d touched a whistling teapot. The beam buzzed, enough to be heard and scatter the soil by its sides.
How the hell’s it moving? Hughes drew his gun and stood—at the same time the beam began hovering an inch off the ground.
Its vibrations rattled the stalks around it, and the base of the block glided to the edge of the pit, as if drawn by a magnet.
He heard Clement from a distance. “Whaddya see?!”
Hughes’s breath escaped him when the beam dropped to the lip of the hole and simultaneously tilted upward to slide into the shaft. And up from the back stalks, rising toward Hughes like a drawbridge, came a monstrous cross.
He heard the confused shouts of the men behind him—for they could also see this twenty-foot-tall symbol of crucifixion slant toward the heavens to anchor itself in the pit with an earthshaking thud.
A shriveled old scarecrow—so skinny it couldn’t be distinguished from the weather-beaten wood—hung like Christ. Its stuffed leather sack of a head dangled so low that Hughes could see the ridge of its back right before his eyes. Hughes reached up and tugged on the floppy field hat adorning its head and found it had been stitched in place. He released the hat so the head would loll back in place.
But the head craned upward.
Hughes’s insides fluttered and he stumbled backward as the scarecrow drew itself up on the cross so its outstretched arms and body formed a perfect T. Its torso expanded, as if it deeply inhaled. The blue suspenders it wore widened as its girth emerged. But Hughes saw it did not draw breath. He looked at its arms—no rope tethered its wrists to the horizontal beam. Its fingers were pressed into well-worn grooves, somehow keeping the scarecrow level. One by one its fingers—with straw for fingernails—lifted from grooves formed by unnatural strength that pressed into wood. Its untied feet—leathery, deformed things that ended in twisty points of hay—appeared somewhat human.
The shriveled head expanded to reveal recognizable things: ragged, chapped lips that appeared sewn shut, red eyes. Perhaps they were bloodshot, Hughes thought as he cocked both guns. He knew otherwise, though, figuring malice and rage brewed the crimson.
The thing dropped to the ground and stood level with Hughes, who fired both guns at its chest, knocking it against the vertical beam. The thing straightened itself. Its chest and arms took a sinewy, muscular form. Hughes realized he wasn’t looking at a leather dummy, but a thing of skin. It moved not for Hughes, but for the two-handled scythe that hung hidden on hooks strategically wedged into the back of the cross. And the scarecrow advanced on Hughes.
He ran for his life, blindly firing behind him, and burst through the corn.
“Wait! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Hughes sprinted toward the wagon and out of the men’s range.
“Now! Shoot!”
They fired into the field. Twenty seconds passed and they stopped to reload. Hughes took up a perch in the wagon bed and saw stalks flicking from side to side.
“It’s still coming!” He looked around and froze. “Oh. My. God!”
“What do you see?!” Diggs, cocking his Derringer, climbed into the bed. He and Hughes, their backs to each other, turned in a circle, and saw spread across the cornfields five more colossal crosses methodically catapulting into place while inexplicably gaining mass. Five more times the ground quaked in succession, signaling the imminent release of vengeance. Diggs didn’t need a telescope to spot spindly figures dropping to the ground. The cornstalks wavered. They approached.
“Franklin, get your ass down here!” Lyle screamed. Franklin lifted his head, shrugged his shoulders and, almost appearing bored, picked up the shotgun and Noah’s Winchester that rested at his feet. He climbed down and joined the circle of confused men facing outward to cover all directions.
“Christ, why don’t we make their jobs easier?” Hughes ran for cover into the barn. Deputy Richard Ellison and Sheriff Clement joined him. The three surviving railroad men made for the house, leaving Lyle, Brendan, Franklin and Diggs by the wagon.
“Where’s Chandler?” It was Brendan.
Lyle aimed his LeMat and fired at the man hobbling toward a tall pine tree closer to the road. Noah, his hands still bound, ducked behind the trunk as the bullets whizzed by him.
“Leave him! If you wish to stay, be my guest.” Diggs scrambled for the horses’ reins. Franklin stood his ground, waiting to catch his first glimpse of the attackers. He kept the guns pointed to the ground. Lyle expressed no interest in fleeing and fired what he perceived to be precise shots into the maize.
“Here, let me.” Brendan disregarded his leg pain, pushed aside Diggs and climbed onto the perch, seized the bridles and released the brake. The crescent-mooned blade of a hand sickle slit through Brendan’s diaphragm. He gasped, slouched forward and grabbed the handle with both hands. A pitchfork skimmed over the horses’ heads and pierced the wooden seatback between Brendan and Diggs.
“To hell with this!” Diggs fled the perch and cowered behind the wheels. Brendan’s injury precluded him from controlling the terrified horses that thundered past the house and into the cornfield, carving a path of trampled stalks into the horizon.
One of the creatures, armed with a long, three-pronged hayfork, scuttled across the path into the stalks, moving closer to the rear yard.
Noah, from his hiding spot, poked his head around the trunk to see Diggs scampering into the house. Lyle, realizing the odds against him, holstered his LeMat and grabbed the white-hot branding iron from the fire. His hands flinched from the heat a few times before he snatched the dry end of a flaming log and joined the lawmen in the barn. Franklin declined to join Diggs and Lyle, and instead, eyed Noah. Rather than aim and fire to keep him pinned, Franklin lumbered toward the tree. Noah, not knowing if moving from his crouch would expose him to any number of sharp blades, stayed, deciding on whether to bowl Franklin over or attempt to reason with him.
Franklin loomed over the huddling Noah and propped both long guns against the spruce.
“Let me see your hands.” His voice carried no hostility, and Noah whirled to do it. Franklin fished a small hunting knife from his belt and cut the ropes. He then let slip the bandolier of Noah’s bullets he’d kept slung over his shoulder.
“I’ve had enough. If they take me, they take me.” Franklin sat similar to Noah, but on the opposite side of the tree so that he could view the show, and his potential demise. He made no move for the two guns leaning against the tree. “I’m so tired. I won’t be a part of killing no woman or baby.”
Noah fitted the bandolier diagonally across his chest and loaded the lever-action rifle to its capacity with thirteen bullets.
“I think it might be best to stay here with you,” he said to Franklin, who embraced his forelegs and propped his head on his knees like a child would.
“Or you could help them.”
“Your boss and the bastard who killed my boss?”
“No. Go help them.” Franklin nodded toward the barn.
One creature, wearing a white Klansman’s hood, laid its hayfork at its feet and with catlike grace scurried up the exterior wall to the closed hayloft door. It slid its fingers into a groove and ripped one of the double-doors off its hinges, letting it crash to the ground. It hopped into the loft to be met by gunfire. Noah and Franklin saw holes pop from the back of its tattered brown shirt. It mattered little to the thing. It looked down to one of its companions, a scarecrow similarly attired in ragged clothing but this one wearing a Confederate soldier’s cap. It grabbed the pitchfork and lobbed it to its brethren, who swiped it midair while pulling a sickle from its belt. It then strode into the barn to do its work.
The thing wearing the Confederate cap spotted Franklin, along with Noah popping in and out of view from the tree’s side. It cocked its head long and hard at Franklin and marched toward him.
It held a rusty machete at its side and brought back the blade to swing. Noah chambered a bullet and aimed.
“Don’t.” Franklin handed Noah the shotgun and let his body go limp, extending his legs before him and clasping his hands on his belly. “It ain’t here for you. I’d move along if I was you.”
Noah took the advice of a man preparing to die and ran past the fast-approaching scarecrow that focused on Franklin. Noah charged the barn and glanced a final time over his shoulder, seeing the thing swing the blade at Franklin. He turned away and shuddered when imagining the blood geyser being hacked from that mountain of flesh.
He stood with his back to a closed barn door, with the door next to it creaking open a tad. He braced himself against the frame and kicked the swinging door wide open to let in sunlight.
Noah prepared to turn and scan the interior but oncoming footsteps kept him pinned. Deputy Hughes, revolvers in each of his hands, sprinted out of the barn. He hadn’t seen Noah because Hughes was on fire—his right shirtsleeve ablaze. He dropped both guns and rolled on the ground to suffocate the flames. Hughes retrieved the weapons and stood, pointing the revolvers into the barn. He glanced left to see Noah aiming both the cocked shotgun and Winchester at him. He never had the chance to pivot and fire as Noah blasted the shotgun at Hughes’ chest, laying him dead on his back. Noah tossed the spent shotgun and pulled his Colt from Hughes’s hand. He loaded it with bullets from his gun belt before holstering it.
The blasts continued from within the barn. Noah peeked inside and saw Lyle and Clement hiding behind overturned worktables opposite the seemingly empty stalls. Toby’s wagon served as an added barrier in the middle of the barn. Clement and Lyle shot at one closed stall in particular. Hay fell from above the pen and Noah saw why: Deputy Ellison had snuck up the ladder leading to the loft while Lyle and Clement kept the creature at bay with gunfire. He kicked clumps of hay down and into the stable, and Noah understood the purpose when he saw Lyle holding the flaming log from the fire pit. Straw littered almost every part of the barn, and the enormity of the situation hit Noah as the log’s falling embers gave life to wisps of flame across the floor. Noah, standing outside with his view unobstructed, aimed his Winchester at Ellison and shot him in the gut. The deputy grunted and lost balance, plummeting from the loft into the stall where they’d cornered the thing. Clement turned and fired at Noah, who ducked out of sight. Ellison screamed. Noah turned and fired at Clement and Lyle, and out of the corner of his eye saw a sickle-wielding, clawed hand rising and falling from behind the stall door—relentlessly chopping the life out of Ellison.
Lyle, holding the burning log and branding iron, wriggled himself to the side of the table and hid behind one of the barn’s support beams. Clement timed his shots toward the entrance to keep Noah hidden. Lyle charged and unlatched the stall door, which swung both directions, and pushed with all his might to pin the thing against the stall’s side wall. Lyle repeatedly jammed both flaming objects into the trapped creature.
The flames grew and Lyle retreated as the thing shrieked and flailed its arms ablaze with fire.
“Got you, you bastard!” Lyle screamed as he ran for cover next to Clement.
Both rejoiced as the howling conflagration fled the barn, past Hughes’s body, almost making it to the water well before collapsing and burning to cinders.
The men’s smiles turned downward when the scarecrow wearing the Confederate cap appeared in the doorway wielding its machete in one hand and the pitchfork that killed Edward in the other.
“Take this.” Lyle passed the branding iron to Clement. The thing slid around the side of the wagon, compelling Lyle and Clement to slink backward. Both prepared to leap or duck, expecting the thing to hurl its tools. Their rearward progress halted when both backed into the ladder leading to the hayloft. The thing launched the pitchfork at Clement, who rolled sideways to avoid it. Lyle, log still in hand, took that opportunity to climb the ladder. The creature sent the machete circling toward Lyle, whose foot made it over the final rung a second before the machete split it in two. The thing reached behind its back to grasp a second machete it had tucked in his belt.
Clement took refuge behind the ladder and fired his revolver between the slats. The thing turned its attention to the sheriff and marched forward, unaffected by the bullets penetrating its body. Clement coughed and grew wary of the burning straw snaking throughout the barn. It was only a matter of time before they licked the support structures.
“Lyle! Do something!” Clement shuffled backward, conserving his bullets, thinking about how to escape if Lyle didn’t help him.
The tip of Noah’s rifle slid into view from the side of the barn door and pointed up. He rested his finger on the trigger, waiting for Lyle to play groundhog.
Show your face; you can’t hide up there forever.
Shattering glass broke his concentration and he turned to the farmhouse. Max, one of the men who shoved Noah before the branding iron, broke through a top-floor window, dangled by his fingertips from the sill and dropped to the ground. He braced himself so the fall wouldn’t break his legs. He rose and sprinted toward the road, seeing and ignoring both Noah to his right and Franklin’s body slouched against the tree up the path. He glanced back to make certain none of the things chased him, and began panting after hitting the half-mile mark, with only one small hill to go before escaping Toby’s property.
Max thought of Charon, the ferryman of the dead, when the gnarled thing wearing tattered burlap rags blocked his exit to the road. A floppy sombrero hid most of its skeletal face—but not the red eyes beaming underneath the brim that stopped Max cold. The thing had wedged in the ground the butt of a hefty six-foot-long, two-handled scythe, and hunched against it, lazily waiting for its prey to arrive.
Max quick-drew and fired, but the gun was empty. He focused not on the creature but on the long curved blade arching over its head.
You’re not leaving, Noah thought. He ignored the Mexican Grim Reaper and knew it completed its job when Max’s desperate scream cut short. Gunshots and sounds of crashing furniture continued from within the farmhouse. Noah wanted to finish what had started in the barn.
Clement, standing near the ladder, fended off the creature with the branding iron. The thing blocked his view of the sheriff, so Noah blasted his rifle into the loft. Lyle sprang to return fire, and in the process dropped the log on the hayloft floor, spreading flames around him. Noah kept shooting to confine Lyle, who reloaded, stood and fired at Noah while kicking mounds of burning hay from the loft, raining them down on the creature below.
Clement ran shoulder-first and tackled the distracted thing, landing on top of it and a pile of fiery hay. Clement pinned the creature’s arms beneath his knees and mercilessly punched its head while tendrils of flame ensnared the writhing thing. The heat became too much for Clement. His only option was to charge and shoot at Noah’s position while fleeing the barn. Noah spun and targeted Clement as he launched himself off the creature to run for sunlight and fresh air. A single shot rocked Clement onto his back, and his shoes almost made contact with the black-booted feet of the burning creature opposite him. His stomach throbbed and he tasted his own blood. He tried standing but couldn’t bend his legs. He tilted his head forward to see a fully engulfed spectre of fire rise like a vampire from its coffin at dusk. It crawled forward and smothered Clement’s body, wrapping its arms around the sheriff’s sides, allowing the fire to consume itself and the screaming man as one.
Lyle felt relief as the creature’s body disintegrated into itself—the sheriff’s pain be damned.
Way to take one for the team, Clement. Now I just gotta worry about Chandler and the smoke.
It was black and billowing as the fire spread. Lyle surmised Noah was good with the rifle and would pick him off, so the ladder was out of the question. Lyle spotted a rope and pulley near where the first creature had yanked off the loft’s exterior door.
Jenkins must’ve used it to lift hay up here.
He saw what he believed to be enough rope, and the intensifying heat prodded him to run. He holstered his gun and hugged the wall to hide from Noah’s view. He jumped and grabbed the rope with both hands, and his body fast descended to the ground, but at a safe-enough speed.
Noah whirled from the barn’s side and aimed into the loft. The pulley’s squeal caused him to look up and see the soles of Lyle’s boots bearing down on him. Noah forward rolled into the barn to avoid Lyle, who landed on both feet and drew his gun, firing it into the haze, hoping Noah would die within.
Noah hid behind a support beam and covered his mouth with his shirtsleeve. He looked to the daylight and saw Lyle running—first to the still-burning fire pit, where he snagged another log, and then toward Toby’s home.
Lyle in one fluid motion grabbed the front door knob, turned it and slid inside as two of Noah’s bullets burrowed into the door as he closed it.
Noah coughed as he fled the barn to take refuge behind its side opposite the farmhouse. The fire continued devouring the building’s guts and it would soon crumble. He loaded the last bullets from his bandolier into his Winchester and did likewise to his Colt. The fact that he had six bullets in the revolver and only one left on his gun belt did not go unnoticed.
He did some quick math in his head. Unless they’re already dead, Diggs is inside with two railroad men and Lyle. The sheriff and his flunkies are gone—well, ’cept for Preston.
Preston.
Noah thought of the name over and over, not knowing why, until it seemed to be echoing in his head. Deputy Drew Preston. Waiting to pounce in Henderson.
At that moment the farmhouse’s front door opened and out shambled a skinny abomination of bones and muscle—the individual fibers visible through a brown membrane that served as the thing’s skin. It wore overalls, a floppy field hat and nothing else, and it made its way along the path to the road. It carried a single hand scythe instead of the massive two-handled job that Deputy Hughes had seen it wield up close.
Preston.
The thing made eye contact with Noah from where he stood by the barn and walked toward him.
Preston.
Noah couldn’t prevent the name from appearing before his eyes—he even saw the letters that spelled it scrolling through his mind to the point where it consumed his vision. He shook his head to clear it and saw the creature standing five feet in front of him.
Noah kept the rifle pointed at the ground. He slowly crouched to lay it at his feet and then rose with his hands raised.
The thing’s eyes reminded Noah of a blind man’s—glaring straight ahead seeing nothing. Only Noah knew this horror could see with the red eyes that flickered in the dark pits of its skull. It flashed yellowed teeth and moved its jaws, as if chewing or trying to speak, unleashing the pungency of decay. Noah caught sight of a black moldy stump in the back of its throat—where its tongue had gone missing.
Noah didn’t think to plead for his life. He didn’t attempt to explain he’d helped rescue Sarah and Isaac Jenkins. One word passed through his lips. “Preston.”
The creature nodded and sprinted toward the road. It passed the sentry standing guard by the farm’s entrance and ran in the direction of downtown Henderson, keeping off the main road, letting nature conceal it.
Noah followed its shadowy form flitting through the trees until it disappeared. He looked back at the entrance and saw the scarecrow there regarding him—deciding on something, Noah guessed. It made up its mind and pointed at Noah, who froze, nervously looking around to see if it could possibly want somebody else. The guard nodded affirmatively and repeatedly jabbed at Noah. It then withdrew its finger and pointed at itself, and then exaggeratedly to the ground it guarded. Scythe in hand, it pursued its comrade through the forest toward Henderson.
“Goodbye, Preston.”
Noah, realizing the thing tasked him with ensuring nobody escaped the premises, grabbed his rifle, and approached the farmhouse and its chaotic sounds.
He gripped the front doorknob.
Should I just walk in or sneak in?
He had no idea how many of those things invaded the house. Based on the gunfire and sounds of furniture and glassware breaking, Noah reckoned at least two of them must be in there with the four men. Maybe Diggs’s goons found a way to defeat them. Lyle figured out how, but Noah took solace in knowing that creating a fast fire would be difficult—unless they found some matches.
“I found some matches!” Lyle screamed from the ground level.
Dammit.
Noah crept to the open window to his left, stepping around Deputy Arnold’s body sprawled beneath it. Noah spied the staircase and figured one of the railroad men, based on the lack of an English accent and closeness of his voice, was downstairs with Lyle—and that the things were upstairs with Diggs and the other guy.
“Find me a broom handle, something! And some rags,” Lyle continued.
Be ready. Just be ready.
Noah levered his rifle when slapdash sounds of jury rigging came from the kitchen.
“Here, take the log,” Lyle shouted. “I’ll use this. Stick it to them good. Now, where are they?”
“First room on the right, follow me.”
Peter dashed through the sitting room and made it up the first two stairs before Noah fired and hit his side. Peter dropped the log, quick-drew and fired. Lyle, trailing Peter and holding a table-legged torch aflame with hand towels, fired his LeMat at the window. Noah returned two shots before ducking under the sill, and then angled the rifle into the house, firing blindly. Lyle pushed Peter up the stairs in retreat. Noah made sure the room was empty and swung his legs over the sill, gaining entry. He grabbed the smoldering log Peter had dropped on the staircase and tossed it outside, well away from the home.
Noah aimed upstairs, preparing to climb, when he heard what sounded like a sharp crack of timber followed by shattered glass. A body crashed outside of the window where Brendan had drifted to sleep. Noah rushed to see Peter facedown on the ground—save for his head, which was twisted one-hundred-and-eighty degrees so that his eyes fried in the sun.
Another body soon joined Peter’s. A scarecrow, its torso ablaze, landed on the dead man but sprang up and ran to the front of the house. What struck Noah as odd—beyond the fact that a mob of scarecrows had gained life and now wielded farm tools of righteousness—was that this one wore a black executioner’s hood and what appeared to be formal black church clothes, almost like a preacher’s. Noah followed its journey, which ended abruptly when it jumped into the water well. Noah heard no splash, only footsteps in the stairwell. He hid behind the sofa as Lyle, Diggs and the final railroad thug named Red thundered downstairs—so fast that Noah fired two bullets without the luxury of aiming, missing them—and out the front door.
A gangly scarecrow wearing a black Stetson and a black bandana tied bank-robber style around its mouth and nose pursued them out the door, dragging two long axes that scraped along the floorboards and Oriental rug. It stopped in the doorframe and hurled an ax. Noah, from his sheltered view by the window, saw only the ax’s rainbow arch, and not its intended target. But he heard the sound it made upon splitting into its mark.
“Head toward the barn, it won’t go near it!” Lyle screamed.
Shit, he’s right.
Noah scrambled to watch through the front door the scarecrow clutching its ax and facing down Diggs and Lyle, both of whom stood before the fully consumed barn. Sprawled in between was Red. An ax cleaved the back of his head—the handle jutting skyward. The creature lurched to the corpse, grabbed the handle and wrenched the blade free.
The heat pushed the two men outward, closer to their pursuer, but they felt emboldened, knowing they’d found its weakness.
“What now?” Diggs screamed over the inferno.
“Dunno, just be ready!” Lyle still held the glowing torch and swiped it sideways. “Right now this is all that’s keeping it back!”
The thing waited—whether it was for the barn to implode or Lyle’s torch to burn itself out, Noah didn’t know. But it seemed content to see how Diggs and Lyle would react to the mounting heat. Noah aimed his rifle—Lyle first, then Diggs, he thought. He had clear shots at each despite the creature. The two men had no idea Noah was moving the rifle to and fro, from one man’s head to the next, planning to literally execute two wicked bastards.
Click.
Shit!
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
He ran his fingers over his empty bandolier.
Shouldn’t have fired when they came running down the stairs.
Noah propped the useless rifle next to the book case and knew he had no other choice. He ran upstairs.
“Come on, come get it!” Lyle taunted the creature, which inched forward, wanting to take the bait but understanding the peril if it did. Diggs stood behind Lyle so that a thrown ax would hopefully strike Lyle first.
Lyle sprang forward, whipping the torch back and forth, backing up the thing. Diggs tried to be useful and found a burning plank of wood to wield. This concerned the creature—although it was patently obvious it feared Lyle and regarded the scrawny Englishman as more of a nuisance. It shrugged its shoulders, not certain of how to conclude the stare-down.
Lyle held the torch up high, waiting to club the thing if it charged.
Several bullets whizzed by Lyle, who froze. He counted five shots and not one of them hit. He looked to the house’s second-floor window facing the barn and saw Noah—Colt in one hand, pounding the sill with the other—venting frustration over how awful a shot he was with a revolver.
“You suck, boy! Come down here and face me like a man!” Lyle screamed. Even the scarecrow watched the window, and Noah lining up another shot.
“Lyle, he’s aiming at you,” Diggs hissed. “Move.”
“I see him.” Lyle remained rigid but saw Noah was way off. “Christ, it’s like he’s not aiming at me.” He chuckled.
Noah fired the final bullet from his Colt and hit his mark. The burning torch head exploded, leaving Lyle with a smoldering handle.
The scarecrow sprinted forward.
“Gimme your board!” Lyle screamed at Diggs, who fumbled and dropped the piece of burning wood before wetting himself.
Lyle drew his LeMat and fired at the creature’s kneecaps, hoping to cripple it. The bullets slowed—but didn’t stop—its progress.
The sound of stampeding horses joined the din of crackling wood. It came from the back cornfield and surprised everyone. Noah’s rig, still steered by Brendan, burst through the stalks near Toby Jenkins’s grave and caught the scarecrow by surprise. The horses and wagon wheels crushed the creature, eventually ripping it in half, sending straw everywhere.
The rig continued its path of destruction up the trail toward the road, only Brendan, tilting sideways, finally succumbed to his injury and fell out of the driver’s seat, landing in a fetal position, clutching the handle of the sickle deep in his chest, covered by dirt left in the fleeing horses’ wake.
Lyle snatched the plank of burning wood by Diggs’s feet and meticulously set ablaze the scarecrow’s remains, keeping an eye on the second floor window.
“You empty, Chandler? Because I’m not!”
Noah felt all the way around his gun belt and found one remaining bullet for his Colt.
“God, help me out here.” It would be his only shot with the revolver and he walked downstairs to meet his fate.
“Come on out, Chandler!” Lyle mocked. “I won’t shoot you like you did Ellison, like a goddamn coward! He wasn’t even looking!”
Noah hid out of sight behind the front door.
“I mean it, Chandler. Take a look, I’m holstered.” Lyle stood amid the burning hay with his arms outstretched to emphasize the point.
Noah exited, also with his gun holstered.
Diggs stood off to Lyle’s side, and when he realized the men would settle scores with a quick-draw—and just how dreadful a shot Noah was—he skulked behind the closest tree that could provide cover.
“I’m gonna make it fair for both of us too. Give you—and me—a clear shot.” Lyle watched to make sure Noah wouldn’t cheat and kicked aside the smoldering scarecrow carcass to create a relatively clear lane for the two men.
“I ain’t ever done this before.” Adrenaline boosted Lyle’s confidence. “And I can pretty much guaran-god-damn-tee you ain’t either. So, whaddya say, we’re about one-hundred feet apart. Think that’ll do?”
Lyle stood ready before the burning barn, which collapsed inward, sending aloft immense plumes of embers and smoke. Heat licked his backside but did not stir him to move. Noah, staked before the water well and swaying cornfields, also felt the heat and couldn’t surmise how Lyle withstood it.
“For all the marbles, Chandler. You should know: I won’t miss.”
Noah tried thinking of something snappy to say.
“You’re probably right,” he said evenly—but thought, Really? That’s the best you could do?
They stood apart, waiting for the other to flinch.
Lyle’s hand remained steady as it hovered a hair above his LeMat.
Noah’s fingers trembled.
They drew at once and fired.
Lyle remained standing. Noah tumbled back against the well and held his hand to his bleeding belly.
“You didn’t even come close, boy.” Lyle sauntered in for the kill. Diggs appeared from his hiding spot and approached the house.
Lyle holstered his weapon and was within twenty feet of Noah, who slid himself back against the stone well, pressing the wound. Maybe the two things that are finishing off Preston will come back and catch Lyle and Diggs by surprise, Noah thought. I doubt they know there’re still two of them left. Noah took zero solace in knowing he might soon be joined in death by a twisted assassin and his paymaster.
“Now, I’d have preferred to have finished you clean, you know, through the heart.” Lyle stood at Noah’s feet. “But I never said I was a sharpshooter—only that I wouldn’t miss.”
Diggs rejoined Lyle but kept his distance from him, not certain what he’d do next.
“Wait, Lyle, we still don’t know the whereabouts of Toby’s wife.”
“Well, shit, you’re right.” Lyle beamed and turned his attention back to the scarecrow. “Couple of axes over there, Chandler. I was gonna burn it out of you before. But I think cutting’ll do the job. I can add to your gash collection.” He turned to Diggs. “Go fetch ’em for me, would you?”
Diggs didn’t mind taking the order.
“Here.” He timidly handed over the weapons, like he’d never held an ax in his life. “Just put him out of his misery once you’re certain he’s telling the truth.”
“Oh, I will.” He flashed dirty teeth at Noah, who tossed aside his empty Colt.
“Even if I knew, I’d never say.” Noah stared at Lyle, trying to suppress dread. “I’ll fight you with every bit of strength I got.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” Lyle stooped like a sumo wrestler, gripping each ax mid-handle, preparing to swoop in and chop.
“Lyle,” called a familiar voice.
He stood and turned toward the sound coming from the house and saw Franklin in the archway aiming a Derringer. Lyle dropped the ax in his gun hand and drew the LeMat but not before Franklin popped a bullet into his heart. Lyle had yet to turn to aim at Franklin and still faced Noah, who watched as the momentum of Lyle’s draw brought the gun toward Noah as it rose. The LeMat slipped from Lyle’s hand and glided toward Noah.
“Traitor!” Diggs flicked his wrist to reveal his own Derringer. Franklin pivoted and triggered his second shot at Diggs but no lead fired.
“Empty!” Diggs cocked both his Derringer’s hammers and pointed, only his chest exploded before he could pull.
“I’m not.” Noah steadied the LeMat as smoke swirled from its tip while the blast’s echo died in the distance. The center barrel’s 20 gauge buckshot blew Diggs off his feet. The body landed ten feet behind where he originally stood.
Lyle staggered and dropped to his knees. He glared at Noah as his life pumped out of him. Using his waning strength he brought back the ax. Noah cocked and switched the LeMat’s hammer to fire the .44 caliber bullets but none remained.
Neither Noah nor Franklin saw Toby Jenkins creep up behind Lyle to smash the rear of his skull with the shovel used earlier to unearth Toby’s own grave. The blow sent Lyle headfirst into the ground to die, knocking his smelly Stetson onto Noah’s lap.