Beneath the Veil (12 page)

A series of gunshots echoed across the quarry. Doc pulled a revolver from his pocket.

“Relax, Doc. That’s our cowboy trying to scare the critters back into the barn.”

“Something’s not right with that boy,” Doc said with a brief smile.

“You’re telling me?”

The two men shared a laugh at Bobby’s expense, a momentary reprieve from the devastation surrounding them. When Bobby returned, they were loading supplies on the flatbed. Doc threaded a rope through a line of gas cans and tied a double knot.

“How’s it looking, Bobby?” Doc asked.

“Ain’t too bad. The animals are fine and I don’t figure we lost any. Fish are jumping. Least somebody’s happy with the change.”

Doc walked over to the waters edge, where fish and turtles were swirling around the debris in the water. They had been careful not to store any chemicals or fuel near the living areas, which prevented the water from being polluted with toxins.

“Look over yonder,” Sully said. “The ledge leading to the mine tunnels is above water, we should get down there and give it a look.”

Doc walked to the truck and grabbed a metal tool box. “That tunnel’s blocked up with a gate. We’ll need to be able to get it open.”

“That’s right,” Sully said. “I remember when it was welded shut.”

Doc took a hammer and chisel out of the toolbox, while Sully pulled two lanterns from the back of the truck. They walked towards the surface entrance of the mine. Doc held the tools in one hand, and his gun in the other. When they reached the opening, he turned to face them.

“Fellas, can you lower those weapons? We don’t need any shooting in here. It could cause a cave-in or worse.”

He said it to both men, but meant it for Bobby. Both men shouldered their weapons. Doc nodded and then stepped into the mouth of the tunnel. They treaded through knee deep water until they reached the rusted iron gate.

“Damn,” Doc exclaimed, stumbling back into the other men.

He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, then stepped forward into the dim light of the lanterns. A putrefied body was wedged between the gate and the stone wall of the mine. It was Owen Bigsby, who drowned trying to escape the quarry. His skin was a bluish white and his eyes were bulging and opaque. Sully’s lantern swung from side to side, bathing Owen’s contorted face in alternating patterns of light and dark. Doc set his tools down and then reached out to stop the lantern’s movement.

“Man, he smells like shit,” Bobby said. “Worse than when he was alive.”

Owen preferred drinking to bathing most days, and was widely considered to be the camp drunk.

“Bobby, do you mind standing back over there?” Doc said, clearly aggravated.

He gestured towards the far wall of the tunnel. Bobby and Sully stepped away from the body, while Doc chiseled the welded seam holding the gate closed. After a few minutes of hammering, the gate swung free. Doc walked through the doorway and then waived Bobby and Sully forward. Both men walked past with their hands cupped over their noses.

“Why don’t you wait down the tunnel a bit?” Doc asked. “Sully, leave me your light.”

Sully set the lantern down next to the tools and hurried away from the ghastly scene. Doc walked over and examined the body. Owen had been liquored up and unaware of the storm until the water woke him. Desperate, he tried to escape through the tunnel and got stuck.

“Sorry, Owen. You shouldn’t have gone out this way,” Doc said aloud. He picked up the tools and lantern and rejoined the other men.

“We should pull him and give him a proper burial. But he’s bloated up pretty badly. It might have to wait a few days before we can get him out of here.”

“I say we leave him right like he is buried in this here tunnel,” Bobby replied.

“We’ll get him in the ground, Doc. When the times right,” Sully said, ignoring him.

They continued deeper into the mine, only to find the path to the ledge still submerged.

“End of the road,” Sully said.

“Yes. That’s it,” Doc said, sadly. “I was hoping we’d find some of the others still alive.”

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“J
ackson, I think we’ve been this way already,” Jen said.

After driving for hours with no sign of the plantation, Jen pulled over to the side of the road and turned around.

“We just came this way,” Jackson said.

“I know. I don’t think it matters.”

She turned onto another road and saw the intersection in the distance.

“What the hell?” Jackson asked. “We just drove up this road.”

“We did. I remember that farm,” she said, gesturing at a barn with weathered gray boards.

They came to a stop in the middle of the crossroads.

“It’s this way, I am sure of it. At least it was.”

“Someone’s in the road up there,” Jackson said.

When the clouds obstructed the sun, they were able to see the silhouettes of a man and a small child. Visible for a moment, both disappeared when the sunlight touched them. Jen grabbed her camera and adjusted the telephoto lens until she saw the ghostly image of her brother standing with Willow.

“What are you doing?” Jackson called out, as she climbed from the truck. He followed her to the side of the road where she peered through her camera.

“Jen?”

“Quiet!” She raised a hand towards him and focused her lens on an empty field.

Barry and Willow materialized in front of them when a group of clouds masked the sunlight.

“What the hell?” Jackson said, stumbling backwards.

Jen stepped forward and tried to reach out to her brother, but her hands passed through him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ve come to warn you.”

“What happened to you?” Jen said, tearfully.

“The same thing that happened to this town, I think.”

She turned to Willow. “Thank you.”

Willow just smiled as she faded in and out with the sunlight.

“This is the girl who helped you escape?” Barry asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s it feel like...to be like that?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t feel anything.” He held up a misty hand and swirled it through the air.

“We change at night,” Willow whispered. “It’s like we come back alive. But only the bad parts.”

“We need to get you both to a safe place,” Jen said. “So we can figure out how to help you.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Jackson asked. “Sorry Barry. It’s just...”

“He’s right. At night we become dangerous and cannot help what we do.”

Jen walked over to the truck and opened the back door. “Get in, both of you.”

C H A P T E R  F I F T Y - T W O

T
hey arrived at the quarry and found they weren’t alone. The flatbed truck was parked with crates stacked behind it. Jen and Jackson got out and opened the back door for Barry and Willow who were clearly visible in the shadows of the truck.

“Wait here,” Jen said to them. “You too,” she said to Jackson, and then walked towards a storage building hoping to find Doc.

Within a few minutes, Jackson spotted Doc, Sully and Bobby. When they saw him, they waived and walked towards him.

Bobby stopped abruptly, raised his rifle and aimed. “Behind you!”

Jackson flinched when a shot sailed past his ear and blew out the rear window of the Rover. Barry felt only a puff of air when the bullet passed through him.

“No. No, don’t shoot!” Jackson shouted.

“Hold your fire!” Doc yelled. Bobby complied and lowered his weapon.

“What’s going on here, Jackson?” Doc’s hand rested on the grip of his pistol.

Before he could answer, Jen ran back from the storage buildings. “They’re with us. It’s Barry and Willow, the girl who helped me escape!”

“You brought those things here?” Sully shouted.

As the sun emerged, Barry and Willow faded from sight.

“They’re gittin’ away!” Bobby shouted.

Doc and Sully looked around, not sure what to do.

“Barry?” Jen asked.

“We’re here,” he replied.

“What in hell is this?” Sully stepped away from the sound of Barry’s voice.

“They came here to help you,” Jen answered. “Please, let’s go inside so we can talk.”

Jen and Jackson stepped into a windowless storage building and found Barry and Willow, fully materialized, waiting in the dark.

Outside, Bobby huddled with Doc and Sully in the comfort of the sunlight. “Looks like a trap to me.”

“I’ve got to agree with Bobby,” Sully said. “I don’t like the looks of this, Doc. Not one bit.”

“Alright, you two wait out here. I’ll go in and hear them out.”

Wind whipped across the open ground, Bobby zipped up his jacket and turned his back to the cold.

“You holler if you need us,” Sully said. “We’ll come runnin’.”

“Will do,” Doc answered.

He stuffed his pistol into his jacket pocket and walked inside. Jen and Jackson stood in front of a wooden shelf with Barry and the girl nearby. He reached for his pistol when Barry moved towards him.

“I’m sorry,” Barry said. “I didn’t want any of this.”

“I know, Barry. It’s not your fault. It’s just who you are.”

“This is not who I am.”

“You are a Rhodes and your people are afflicted.”

“They’re not afflicted. They’re under the control of something terrible. The one they call Evangeline.”

“Ezra’s sister?” Doc asked.

“That thing is not my family. It’s something far worse than the others.”

“She eats people,” Willow said. Her child’s face punctuated with black coal eyes.

“What the hell is she, then?” Doc asked.

“I don’t know,” Barry answered. “But I plan to find out.”

“We need to get back soon,” Willow said, looking up at Barry. “Otherwise, they will come here and find us.”

C H A P T E R  F I F T Y - T H R E E

J
immy heard the drone of a vehicle’s engine echoing though the hills. He took cover and waited with his gun ready.

“Marie?” he yelled.

“Right here, Jimmy,” she answered, poking her head out of the cabin.

“You might want to keep the kids in for a while and lock that door behind you.”

“Something wrong?” Her voice was high and she sounded nervous.

“Nah, just heard a vehicle on the mountain. Want to make sure they’re friendly, that’s all.”

She closed and locked the cabin door. The kids were busy playing a boisterous game of hide and go seek, but stopped when they saw her bolt the cabin door shut.

“Mama, what’s wrong? Vicki asked. The twelve year old walked over to her mother and looked into her frightened eyes.

“Nothing, pumpkin. Jimmy just heard a car, that’s all. We need to be extra careful these days.”

Daniel moved closer to his two sisters. Marie’s eight year old son Max walked over to a boarded up window and peered through a peep hole drilled into the wood.

“Is Jimmy gonna be alright by himself?” Max asked.

“Oh sure, he’ll be fine.” Panicked thoughts crept into her mind, but she held them at bay.

After a few tense minutes, she looked out and saw the flatbed followed by the Rover. Relieved, she unbolted the door and walked onto the weathered porch.

“False alarm, I guess,” she said, smiling.

“Yep, just Doc and the others,” Jimmy answered. “Hope they found somethin’ we can use.”

Doc tooted the horn as he pulled the flatbed in front of the cabin and Jackson pulled beside it.

“How you making out, Jimmy?” Sully climbed out of passenger side of the truck.

“Better than they you did.” He gestured at the Rover’s shattered rear glass. “What happened?”

“We had a small misunderstanding. Help us unload and we’ll tell you all about it,” Doc answered.

“Come on now. Give a hand,” Marie leaned in the cabin door and called for the children.

Max and Daniel raced to the truck and each grabbed a box.

“Slow down, boys,” Jimmy scolded. “Careful with those.”

The boys stepped gingerly over jagged boards nailed in at random intervals along the porch. Doc examined the barriers running the length of the cabin.

“Nice work, Jimmy,” Doc said. “This oughta slow those things down tonight.”

On the back of the porch, timbers were arranged into a makeshift bunker with sharpened sticks surrounding it. “Check this out,” Jimmy said. He pushed a wooden panel covering a window behind the bunker and it swung inward.

“We can get in and out real fast, and I worked up a way to lock it from the inside.”

“This is good,” Doc said.

He had also arranged a dozen homemade torches in front of the cabin. The torches were made from tree branches wrapped with fuel soaked cloth.

Bobby examined the torches with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Watch that cigarette, Bobby!” Jimmy shouted.

“Relax,” Bobby answered. “It ain’t even lit yet.”

“Now for the last piece,” Jimmy walked to an oak tree with five ropes dangling from a thick branch, each with a hangman’s knot tied at the end. “When it’s all done, we can string up any injured ones and burn them in the morning.”

“I like it. We need to start taking those things out permanently,” Sully said.

Doc opposed the hunting parties, once commonplace in the camp. But his complaints were ignored until they lost an entire group of men. The incident changed most people’s thinking, but not Sully’s. He couldn’t stand hiding and hoping the creatures would leave them alone.

“Five of them dead will cost five of us,” Doc said flatly. “You know the way it works.”

“You don’t know that,” Sully objected.

Doc turned to Jackson and Jen. “Whenever we’ve destroyed one of them, they’ve taken one of us in replacement, sometimes more than one.”

“Here a newsflash for you,” Bobby said. “It don’t matter what we do. They plan on taking us all anyhow.”

“I’m with Bobby on this,” Sully said. “I don’t believe a thing those things told you.”

“Now, hold on,” Jen said. “My brother risked everything to come warn us.”

“You saw Barry?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah, what’s left of him,” Bobby quipped.

“Can we cool it?” Jackson pointed at the fading sunlight. “Save your fighting for the dark.”

C H A P T E R  F I F T Y - F O U R