Black Water (37 page)

The warm breeze grew to a hot wind, now roaring like a hurricane, and as it rolled hurly-burly through the camp, it swirled around Hub’s body, wrappin’ around him like a spider cocooning a June bug. He wanted to scream, but he was either too scared or somehow paralyzed. The thing, whatever it was, both did and didn’t want him to move. His not moving meant it could drag the moment out, make it last, ‘cause when Hub did move, it’d attack, and the game would be over. He also knew the attack would be short and it’d hurt.

A lot.

He felt the warmth of its face moving along the contours of his body, then returning quickly to the side of his face, always back to the left, to see his reaction. A cat playin’ with a mouse.

Then it stopped. He and it detected some other thing at the same time. Something was coming. Something even more hideous than this thing. IT was bringin’ it! It had….

I’ll take the younger one first
whispered deep in his brain, and immediately the silence let go. The roaring wind assaulted his ears like pouring boiling water on a cold hand. The new thing was just beyond the camp. Hub heard it over the wind. It was real. Not something the goggle-eyed demon had planted in his brain. Son of a bitch! The goggle-eyed Thing! It was Her! The Witch! She’d created a diversion. He knew he was right, ‘cause when the thought entered his mind, he felt the heat bristle beside his face. She wanted to keep his mind on her and not on what was outside the camp.

Unbeknownst to Hub, Harvey and Raeleen had been going through the exact same experience. The thing beside their face, the heat, the glaring, the floating, and now—the new presence of the somethin’ else prowling outside the camp.

Suddenly, she was gone! Her objective had been achieved, and now it was time for the next show. And there it was. A deep snuffling, grunting, snorting just beyond the camp. Their paralysis over, Harvey’s and Raeleen’s hands slid to their weapons layin’ beside ’em, and quickly they jumped up, guns at the ready. And that was it! From all around the camp came a deafening, horrendous, screeching wail, and with it, a hot, gale-force wind.

Hub was terrified. He’d heard that same human, yet inhuman wail before. In his nightmares. The only way he could sit up was facing the tree, and with his legs wrapped around the small trunk, he hollered into the raging wind to be cut loose. Harvey and Raeleen paid him no attention, too busy pointin’ their weapons outside the camp. All around. The howls and yowls was everwhere, but they could see nothin’ other than large, dark, shadowy shapes crashing through the brush and the trees, circling the camp like a bunch of wild Indians around a wagon train. Insane with fear, Harvey couldn’t take it any longer and fired into the dark. Shootin’ at somethin’ he couldn’t see was better than waitin’ for somethin’ he couldn’t.

As if his shot was just the spark they’d been waitin’ for, the camp was filled with monstrous black forms crashing through the camp, trompin’ the fire’s embers, scatterin’ sparks like maddened fireflies. One o’ the beasts had actually stomped Hub’s right leg when it charged past him. Terrified, he had no room for thought, only action, and hugged up tight to the little tree, but at eight or nine inches across, it wasn’t much of a shield.

Superman’s arms shocked straight up over his body, rudely awakened by a pistol’s explosion and thundering cloven hooves. He sat up groggily, lookin’ through bloodshot eyes that refused to work in tandem, tryin’ to make sense of a senseless situation. Lacking the many hours of slumber needed to purge his system of the seizure and venom, he had no idea of what was goin’ on, when suddenly his upper body was bashed by a four-hundred-pound hog from Hell. Absolutely unprepared, he never saw it coming.

The animal’s gaping, scimitar-tusked maw hit him flat in the chest, emptying his lungs and slammin’ him on his back. While the monster stood on his body, a second animal shoved up from behind and clamped its massive jaws on Superman’s lower right leg. A sharp jerk of the beast’s head dislocated the leg from the hip and tossed him, flailing, eight feet through the air. A third monster seized his midsection before he hit the dirt. A dozen crazed, coarse-haired, tusked behemoths snorted and grunted to get at him. They looked like twelve starved hogs tryin’ to eat from a two-hog trough.

Packs of wild swine, javelinas or peccaries, the size of large dogs, roam the backwoods of Southern Looziana, and they can be deadly, but they were nothin’ compared to these things. In a matter of seconds, they’d all shared in ravaging Superman, pushin’ one another aside to get to him, tearin’ him apart.

Hub kept yelling to be cut loose, but Harvey and Raeleen had their hands full firing at the tusk-wielding horde. Because most o’ the animals seemed to be coming from Hub’s direction, that’s where most o’ the bullets were going. Hub darted to the other side o’ the little tree like a crab scuttlin’ around a rock. Bullets plicked and plocked the ground and chipped bark off the tree. One clipped the tip of Hub’s left shoe.

The hogs roared, squealed, and pushed one another out o’ the way, all wantin’ a piece of Superman, and all the time, the screeching wail permeated everthing. Raeleen and Harvey fired and fired and fired at anything that moved, and that kept Hub on the far side o’ the treelet. After the first half dozen or so’d flowed around both his sides like water around a rock, he realized they’d never even looked at him. They weren’t payin’ any attention to Raeleen or Harvey, either. They were so close that their gun barrels actually pressed into the creatures’ bodies when they passed. Raeleen and Harvey fired until they ran out o’ ammunition, then they reached for their rifles. The things had showed no concern whatsoever as the weapons exploded time after time.

There was no question about it; they had but one goal—Superman. They weren’t interested in, didn’t even see, anything else. The battle seemed to go on forever, but in less than a minute, as quickly as it started, it was over. What was left of the demonic herd thundered off into the dark, the pounding of their massive hooves fading. The hot wind and the screeching wail rolled into the distance, following the herd, and finally dissolved to nothin’. The only sounds left came from two damaged and squealin’ hogs their comrades had left for dead, Raeleen’s, Harvey’s, and Hub’s raspy breathing, and Superman’s gurgling moan.

Hub grabbed the ankle manacles and ratcheted the chain up and down the tree trunk, rasping off bark and lookin’ around, fully expecting the demons to catch their breath, get a drink of water, and come back for a second round. “Get me out o’ these fuckin’ things!”

Three of the huge beasts lay scattered around the camp, dead, the other two still kickin’, tryin’ to get up. Harvey finished ’em off with vengeful shots to the head. Raeleen allowed her rifle to slip from her hand and scurried to what was left of Superman. He was torn to pieces. Literally. His colorless, bloodless right arm lay five feet from his body. The left, also torn asunder, nowhere to be seen. The monsters had played a lethal game of tug-o-war, and Superman had lost.

It hadn’t been a rogue herd o’ swine lookin’ for somethin’ to eat. They were messengers, and the message had been delivered.

Falling to her knees, Raeleen tried to pick Superman up to cradle him, but he shrieked in pain. Scared to death for his brother, Harvey bent over him and was shocked beyond words at the ragged, bleeding ends at his shoulders where his arms used to be. There was a bloody flap of scalp hangin’ down almost to his cheek that hid his right ear. Harvey carefully, lovingly, pushed it back and tried to press it to his head. After two attempts, he gave up—it just wouldn’t stay put. The muscle high on the left thigh showed through his shredded britches, and there was a huge, jagged slice on his left side below the ribcage, exposing some kind of ropey internal part. Because the night negated all color, it looked as if the blood pulsing casually, rhythmically from the wounds was black. Even in the weak light, it was obvious he couldn’t survive.

Harvey bent down, his face to Superman’s, and tenderly brushed the back of his finger over his undamaged cheek. One of the few parts still intact. “I’m sorry for ever time I ever hitcha.”

“Don’t tell ‘im a thing like ‘at!” Raeleen growled.

Superman looked at Raeleen. “No, Earth Mama, ‘at’s awright. I’m Superman.” Then, as if a switch had been flipped, his eyes saw no more. Superman, The Man of Steel, last remaining citizen of Krypton, was as dead as dead could get.

“No no no no,” Raeleen wailed, pulling her dead baby to her sloshy breast. “My poor little boy.” She rocked, cradling his head to keep it from flopping, and pushed stray hair from his color-drained face. She turned the body to look at the damage, and, when her gaze passed over his chest, her mouth fell open, staring at his bloody shirt with the trashed S. Putting careful and tender aside, she ripped away what was left of his tattered shirt.

No hex bag.

He’d left it hangin’ on the bush at the creek that morning so it wouldn’t get in his way while washin’ up, and later, when he discovered it was missing, he’d been fearful of telling Raeleen. Not only would he have had to put up with gettin’ whacked and yelled at, but they woulda lost precious time havin’ to go back to retrieve it. And she woulda gone back. And he woulda got yelled at. And he woulda got whacked on. Then, after retrieving it, they woulda got back to the place from whence they’d started, and she woulda whacked him again to remind him of how much time they’d lost. Then she’d whack him again and tell him how careless he’d been for takin’ it off in the first place, and threaten to whack him again if he ever took it off again. What few times, when he was little, he’d taken it off, she’d yelled at him and riddled his fat little legs with welts from a keen switch she flicked like a whip. He was much more fearful of a red-faced, butt- and face-whackin’ mother he could see and feel than the fearful witch he’d never seen, that the bag was supposed to protect him from.

“No no no no,” she moaned, angrily, pounding Superman’s inert body. Then, in mid-pound, she stopped. Her body stiffened, and she turned and looked wild-eyed across the bodies of five dead hogs that had just killed her baby…to Hub, still tethered to the tree. “It’s started,” she said. She’d seen the light. Like the Good Book said, the writing was on the wall. “You did this!”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You. You ‘n th’witch. She said she’d take mine fer hers ‘n now she’s done it.” She chinned to the mangled body in her arms. “Which one’d he pay for ya think, huh? George ‘r Matthew?”

Hub thought he was actually watchin’ somebody lose their mind.

“We’re dead,” she said as if it’d already happened.

“Bullshit!”

“All of us!”

“Well, you lay down ‘n die if ya want, but I ain’t goin’ with ya,” Hub said with a lot more bravado than he felt. He grabbed the leg irons still wrapped around the tree trunk and shook ’em violently. “Unlock these God Damn things.”

Raeleen let Superman’s body ease to the ground, wrangled herself up, and stood on shaking legs, her dress soaked with her son’s blood. She picked her rifle up off the ground and aimed the business end at Hub.

“You gonna shoot me?” he asked, tryin’ for time to head her off. “What ‘bout th’curse? You gonna help Lootie out b’shootin me? ‘At’s nuts! You got one son left. If ya wanna live,” he pointed to Harvey, “if you want th’one ya got left t’live, we gotta get out o’ here. Out o’ th’swamp.”

She looked at Harvey. He’d taken up her position when she got up, bent over Superman’s blood-soaked body, tears runnin’ down his cheeks, snot runnin’ over his lip, and blubberin’, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She looked back at Hub.

“Don’tcha see?” he pursued, “‘at’s egzakly what she wants ya t’do. She had t’slip up on us when we’s asleep. Don’tcha see? ‘At’s th’only way she’cd do it. We wasn’t expectin’ it, ‘n our power was down. But now, we know what she’s up to ‘n we’cn fight it. We gotta stay strong, though, stay t’gether, fight ‘er off. The fewer of us they is, th’better chance she’s got.” It made no sense at all, a stone-cold bluff, but it was all he had. “If we got any chance a’tall, we need t’get out o’ here.”

She looked like she was thinkin’ it over.

“Rae! We gotta go!”

She was thinkin’ that maybe he was right. Besides, she could always kill him when they got out o’ the swamps. “Get up,” she ordered Harvey. “It’s almost sunup. We’re leavin’.”

Harvey couldn’t believe it. “What ‘bout Superman? We can’t just leave ‘im like this. We gotta bury ‘im! He’s my brother!”

“No!” She stomped to him, grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and hoisted him off the ground. “Not no more! Now he’s just dead! Getchur stuff t’gether, we’re goin’!”

“But, Mama, they’ll eat ‘im.”

“No! Move! Now now now,” she growled, spraying curds of spit, and with each
now
he turtled up his shoulders as she pounded him on the back, pushin’ him to action. Then she grabbed his shoulder, yanked him around and ripped his shirt open, exposing the hex bag hangin’ around his neck. She thrust an accusatory finger at Superman’s armless body. “Now d’ya understand? Is it funny now? Huh? Is it still somethin’ t’give me a hard time on ‘n laugh about? He took it off ‘n that’s all it took!” Before he could say anything, she pulled him to her, wrapped her arms around him, gave him a quick hug, pushed him off, and gestured toward Hub. “Get that bag on him ‘n let’s get out o’ here.”

Harvey’s first order of business was to take a big breath and calm down. It was hard to do with most of his brother’s body layin’ in one place, another part a few feet away, and yet more gone. He picked up the satchel, carried it to Hub, unlocked the ankle manacles, took ’em off, and dropped ’em in the satchel. Hub stood up and Harvey unlocked the wrist chains. “Putchur pack on.”

Hub picked it up, put his arms through the straps, and settled it between his shoulder blades. Harvey clamped one end o’ the chain to Hub’s wrist. Then he picked up the satchel and slipped the end o’ the chain through the handles. He started to clamp the end down when he felt somethin’ hot and sticky. Blood. Tricklin’ down Hub’s forearm, off his fingers, onto the satchel. Hub pushed the sleeve up. Blood was seeping from the scar.