Hellfire (17 page)

Kemp and the girl were there, gasping for air, their eyes wide.

“Get in here!” Blake barked.

The two didn’t argue. He shoved them down the hallway and turned back to the mob. They were less than a minute away. Blake gritted his teeth.

He turned back inside, grabbing the wooden door as he went and slamming it shut. A thick lock rested on the inside, and he bolted it tight. He hoped that would be enough to hold them until they got this thing off the ground.

The girl and Kemp were already in the forecab. Kemp looked it over.

“Can you get it going?” Blake asked. He was surprised at how breathy his voice was.

“I’ve been working a locomotive for years,” Kemp said. “How different could it be?”

Blake nodded, but then he stopped and looked back at the fiery-haired boy. “I thought you were the fireman, not the engineer.”

“Yeah, but I kept an eye on things,” Kemp said simply.

The girl let out a sharp groan and buried her face in her hands.

Kemp ignored her and stepped to the controls. His head moved up and down and from side to side as he looked each one of them over. Blake watched. He wondered what the young fireman thought as he pieced them together.

“Ah, here we go,” Kemp said. He used a muddy hand to grab one of the levers above his head and pulled.

A moan like a giant’s yawn came from above their heads. Blake looked upward a moment. The girl was standing next to the stack of gauges with a puzzled look on her face.

“Is this needle supposed to be moving down?” she asked.

Kemp dashed toward it, stopped, and gasped. “We’re losing pressure!”

He ran back to the lever and shoved it back into place.

“Not that one?” Blake asked.

“No, that apparently opens the flaps to allow air to escape,” Kemp muttered. “I thought it looked right since its line was directed upward, but maybe we need…”

Blake grimaced.

“Kemp!” a voice cried from outside.

Blake’s grimace deepened. Their pursuers had caught up.

Pounding started at the back door.

“Kemp! Open the door!” the voice yelled again.

Blake crept across the forecab and peeked around one of the paper shutters.

Ticks stood outside, his boots planted firmly. He had his black coat tossed back. Both of his hands rested on revolvers at his hips. “Kemp! I’m going to give you until the count of three to come out of there, and then I’m coming in after you!”

Blake leaned at the corner for cover and looked at the door. There was rhythmic thudding at the back door now. The wood held against the pounding fists, an ax would break through in two swings.

“One!” Ticks shouted from outside.

Blake looked back at Kemp. He and the girl were looking over the controls furiously, trying to decipher them.

“Two!”

He turned back to Ticks. Blake knew he had to do something to stall. He brought up his dragoon and took aim.

“Thr—”

Just as he started the word, Blake snapped a shot at Ticks’s feet. Something tempted him to aim for the marshal’s heart, but that would not be justice. Maybe the man with the waxed mustache deserved it, especially after what he did to Mrs. Kemp and her daughter, torturing them with cruel words, on the edge of a fit of laughter… but Blake wasn’t a coldblooded murderer.

The bullet cast up a spray of dirt. Ticks went into a fury of dancing, throwing up his arms and legs and stumbling backward. The pounding at the back door stopped.

Blake smiled.

Ticks recovered himself and ducked into the crowd of orderlies who stood watching. He grabbed one around the neck and held him in front of his body with the crook of his arm over the orderly’s throat. The orderly gagged and pulled with both hands.

“Jack!” the girl whispered in fright.

Blake’s smile faltered.

“That is enough!” Ticks screamed. He drew out a gun with his free hand. “Come out now!”

There was a series of clicks behind Blake. He turned to see Kemp standing with a lever pulled tight in his hand. The sound of rushing wind filled the whole cabin. It came from the furnace behind them, which spilled out a smell of rotting eggs that mixed with the warm cedar.

“There it is!” Kemp called. He and the girl let out wild laughs. They threw their arms around one another. Then they suddenly parted and looked away, both with red cheeks.

The floor moved under Blake’s feet. They were actually moving upward.

“Stop them!” Ticks shouted. He opened fire, shooting one round after the next at the airship.

“Get down!” Blake bellowed.

He pushed himself away from the wall and tackled the two, forcing them to the floor. There wasn’t much cover, but there was hardly any chance that Ticks would hit any of them. Blake counted the shots… four, five, six, and they stopped.

“Okay,” he said. He let the two young people go. “He’s done for now.”

There were several holes in the paper shutters. Splinters of wood stuck out where the bullets had gone into the ceiling.

“What if he shot the balloon?” the girl asked.

Kemp shrugged. “Bullet holes are too small to do any real damage, I think.”

“Better the balloon than any of—” Blake was cut off by a loud thud from the rear of the airship.

The back door had burst open.

Without a word, Blake broke into a run down the long hallway. Several men were already there, pushing their way inside. The one in front had an ax. Another behind him had a shovel, and yet another had a wrench held up over his head.

Blake brought up his revolver again. His finger twitched on the trigger.

He wasn’t a murderer. In all his years of service, he’d never shot a man. There had been plenty of times he’d shot at men, keeping them pinned behind cover while someone went down to surround them. Most men were reasonable. When they recognized that facing a judge was better than getting shot in a standoff, they would give up out of self-preservation.

Men who got spooked were a gamble. Some gave up immediately. Others panicked and went wild, willing to shoot anything.

Blake didn’t have these men surrounded, and they wouldn’t run out of ammunition. All he could do was spook them… or put them down. He should at least warn them.

“Get out!” Blake shouted. “I don’t want to shoot you!”

The men replied with a rallying cry and dashed forward with their makeshift weapons.

Blake winced, but then he opened his eyes and fired. The gun let out a deafening roar that echoed down the hallway.

The man in front uttered a dull gasp and dropped his ax. He fell forward onto the wooden deck.

Blake let out a pained yell of his own. He twisted the fear and guilt into anger and turned the scream into a battle cry. He kept it going, roaring with all his might. Leaping into a run, his pace picked up as he went. His boots pounded against the cedar floor to add to his noise. Blake leaped over the fallen ax-man, who lay still.

The other men fell back. They ducked out the door and back onto the little platform.

Blake gave a final shout as he ran and shot his dragoon again. He aimed between them, missing any human flesh. A piece of a wooden post that was part of the rope railing behind them exploded, leaving a black scar amid cedar splinters.

That was enough to drive them off the airship. The men jumped away from him and disappeared. A moment later, Blake heard a pair of thumps on the ground below.

He stopped running when he reached the doorway. His old heart was fighting its way out of his chest. He took several breaths to calm down.

They were about twelve feet up, and the ground receded faster and faster. The top floors and roof of the hospital filled most of Blake’s view. Looking down past his feet, he could see men standing helplessly, looking back up at him. Ticks ran among them, shouting something that nobody seemed to hear.

Blake had never especially been a friend to high places. He’d dealt with them when he had to, like when he had to patch his roof or the time he climbed Bastrop’s water tower to get Barney Perkins down when the man raved with Stoker’s Madness. Seeing the ground actually falling away made his head spin. His stomach was already unsettled from shooting the man with the ax. He walked backward into the hallway and shut the heavy door again. The lock was broken, but that didn’t matter anymore.

Blake let his gun fall to the floor. He wanted no part of it for a while.

When he turned, he found the man he had shot lying in the hallway. Blake thought he had moved a little from where he fell.

He walked calmly up to him and knelt down. Blood was spattered all across his trousers at the thigh. The man held his leg and whimpered.

Blake hadn’t killed him, just winged him below the hip. It didn’t even hit an artery. He let out a long sigh of relief.

They had made their escape, stealing federal property and taking a hostage. At least murder wasn’t added to the list.

This wasn’t everyday work for a lawman.

Chapter Twenty

Tom Husk panted as he swam. Drops of muddy water splashed into his mouth, and he spit them out again. He had long given up retching against the flavor of dirt, fish, and decaying vegetation. All that mattered was survival.

He didn’t know how long he had been swimming, but it looked like it the sun had begun its slow descent toward the west. That meant he had left the lumberyard hours before and spent nearly all his time hiking or swimming since. If he lived to find a bed, he vowed he would stay there forever.

His arms ached, but he made them keep dragging his body forward. Husk fought exhaustion by floating and letting the bayou carry him a little at a time. If he tried to float without swimming for too long, he would begin to sink again. His feet felt like lumps inside his socks and boots, which had swelled up with bayou water.

A shadow crossed his vision. Husk gasped and dove beneath the water. He pushed himself down as far as he could go and swam with his arms and legs like a frog.

Above him, there was a furious splash. He pushed a few more strokes and then came back up to the surface for a gasp of air. Beside his head, there was a bobbing log, surrounded in popping bubbles it had made.

Husk looked back at the bank. The monster was there, huffing to itself and looking for another projectile as it followed him. It had grabbed dirt clods, rocks, and even a branch torn off a tree to hurl at Husk while he desperately tried to swim away. Whenever he got too close to the opposite shore, it threatened to jump again. Husk doubted he could outrun it, even if he had the energy to climb through brush a monster could smash out of its way.

It was funny: the more time he spent with the monster, the less horrifying it seemed. It had surprised him to the point he lost his breakfast, but now it was just ugly. He didn’t fear it anymore. He hated it.

He wanted to kill it.

Husk had known from the beginning it was evil, something so wrong it shouldn’t be real. He wondered how the mayor had tolerated it so long. The Rail Agency could be very persuasive since they held the schedules to trains that determined the economic viability of a town, but why would they try to keep locals away from it?

Circus ape indeed.

A crunching sound rang. Husk peeked above the water enough to see the monster tossing a cluster of branches up into the air. The twigs were intertwined and snapped as the misshapen brush broke in two.

Husk dove again. The monster had been throwing anything it could find, but the brush didn’t seem too threatening. It crashed into the water with a fresh set of bubbles.

He rose back to the surface for a breath. Just as he opened his eyes, he saw a fist-sized rock headed straight for his head.

He didn’t have time to swear. Husk tried to duck, but the sharp stone caught him along the scalp. He grabbed his wound with one hand and slid back below the water.

Great, now I’m bleeding, too, he thought. At least having the monster around him kept away the alligators. Animals had enough sense to stay clear of it. Only a human would be foolish enough to try to go near the thing.

When Husk’s lungs burned from stale air, he went back up to the surface. He stayed low in case the monster watched for him, took a drop-flecked breath, and then ducked down again.

He swam for he didn’t know how long this way. Every few moments, another branch or rock came his way, but he usually had enough warning to duck out of its way.

The water became more turbulent. Husk panicked and swam away from the liquid rocking him. Maybe it was the monster overcoming its fear and diving in. Maybe it was rolling a huge tree after him.

Husk’s lungs burned again, but he fought to stay underwater. It was still shaking around him, and then it went still. He hung in the murky depths for a moment, feeling it move around him. It wasn’t faster, but something had changed. Curiosity pestered him more than his aching lungs, and he went back to the surface.

He rose up slowly, just the top of his head to his eyes. Water poured off his hair and blurred his vision. He risked wiping it away with a hand and spun around slowly to get his bearings.

There were suddenly three views of water instead of just upstream and down. Husk blinked more water out of his eyes. It was Twelve Mile Bayou. He’d made it to where Middle Bayou joined up. It wasn’t far now to Shreveport and safety.

The monster stood on the far bank, which was now a corner of land between the two bayous. Its mouth gaped open, showing rows of triangular teeth.

Husk leaned back in the water and let it slowly draw him away. He grinned. He was all in the clear now.

He didn’t know how many men the monster had killed, but at last Husk wasn’t one of them. Maybe the wounded ones had a chance to get up while he had unintentionally lured it away. If anything, Husk was a hero.

His grin grew. “Not bad for a newspaperman.”

The monster let out a bleak howl from its corner.

“I beat you!” Husk called back.

It stopped howling and looked at him with its tiny eyes set between mounds of flesh.

Husk laughed. “That’s right! I beat you!” He laughed again.

When he looked again, the monster was gone. Husk blinked and noticed his heart race. It was somehow worse not knowing where the monster was than having it follow him.

“It probably went back to its burrow,” Husk told himself.

A tremendous crash rolled like thunder from the nearer bank. Softer thuds followed. Husk couldn’t see what happened, but the trees all shook.

Husk found water washing up over his mouth. He sputtered and fought back into a swimming position. After a few strokes, he peeked again.

The monster was there, on the bank, standing in the shadows under the leafy boughs.

“Oh no,” Husk muttered.

It must have jumped the bayou again. Now it was stomping after him. Its merciless expression of humored torture was replaced by determined rage.

“Aw, leave me alone!” Husk called.

It roared back at him. The sound made Husk’s ears hurt.

He fell back into a slow crawl. The flow of the water was with him at least, giving him a little extra pace now that they were closer to the river. The monster had to keep up a trot to stay with him.

He kicked himself for mocking it. This whole day had been a fiasco. If he had just taken his story last night and gone home, he could be taking an afternoon nap now, waiting for out-of-town papers to arrive before setting his news in the printer. No, he had to follow the lead the sheriff had suggested. It was all Blake’s fault.

Stop thinking that, Husk shouted inside his head as he swam.

Husk had brought up the other train wrecks in the first place. Blake was a good man, and he had meant well. There was a mystery to be solved to keep his town safe. Husk couldn’t blame him for that without being a miserable waste of a man himself.

He had to blame someone else.

It was that gator-hunter Pike’s fault for missing the lasso. In fact, he even put this cursed expedition together. The mayor and the rail agents had told the townsfolk to keep clear of the monster. Why didn’t they listen?

Why didn’t I listen? Husk asked. Goosebumps broke out across his cold cheeks. Because I had to know the truth.

The truth was everything. Stories filled with gossip might sell a few papers in the short run, but that was nothing. A real newspaperman built a foundation of truth and trust. This monster destroyed lives, and he had to warn people.

Besides, it is evil.

The voice in Husk’s head didn’t seem like his own. He paused a moment and then went back to swimming. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was right. If he had any iota of righteousness in him at all, he had to destroy that monster.

“Righteousness.” There was a word that Husk hadn’t heard since giving up Sunday morning meetings more than twenty years ago. He wasn’t sure if he even knew what it meant anymore.

Husk gritted his teeth and blew air through them to keep out the dirty bayou water. “I have to kill it.”

How, exactly, he didn’t know. His revolver was at the bottom of the bayou, which was just as well since his ammunition was soaked through in his pocket. Every inch of him was drenched. At least the cold water was good for his jammed fingers. They hurt a little, but he was more worried about his aching arms and legs from swimming so far.

If he were exhausted, he could only imagine how the monster felt moving around its huge mass. Or maybe it didn’t get tired. It’d been shot with more than a hundred bullets during the course of the raid, yet it seemed strong as ever.

Except for the spear.

It had been hurt. The boar spear had hurt it, and so had the machete.

Husk took a long stroke and peeked back at the monster again. It still followed him, lurching through the twisted underbrush at the edge of the bayou. Its left arm, where the boar spear had stuck him, still dangled. Its right arm, where the machete had hit, still oozed gray pus. Perhaps that was why it only threw small things at him in the river.

What’s different about the spear and the machete? Husk pondered, going back into his swimming. Its size. It has a lot of surface area to make contact.

It was an idea, at least, which was more than he had a minute ago. If he were going to fight for his life, he needed a weapon with mass, something that could hit the monster very hard and keep the wound open. Husk wondered if he could commandeer a locomotive and run it down.

He shook his head at himself and spat more water. Trains had gotten this whole mess started. Maybe he could cut a bell loose from the town square or…

The notion struck him as he heard the distant thrumming of the city sawmill. Husk couldn’t even see Shreveport yet over the muddy water that sloshed into his eyes, but he could hear it. The sawmills were roaring with turbines that spun enormous blades fast enough to slice through whole tree trunks. The trunks were stacked up in the yard awaiting pickup for furniture mills or men needing cabins. Husk had read the stories about what was left of men who had gotten sucked under when one of the piles fell. Not even a monster could survive that.

Husk paddled toward the sound. The bayou was empty since many of the lumberjacks had taken the afternoon to go monster-hunting, and fishermen would have cleared out by the heat of the day. He was surprised he didn’t run across at least a little boat, but he supposed people weren’t out much with a monster running around.

His legs were so tired they burned, and Husk’s arms outright hurt. Yet, he didn’t dare stop swimming. He had to stay ahead of the monster enough to make it to shore and get into the lumberyard. The pain grew worse and worse. Husk sucked down as much sultry air as he could and pressed on.

The distant noise of the sawmill became clear whines of different blades. Each called out with a different tone when they bit into types of wood. The mill itself came into view with the tips of smokestacks and the metal pipes reaching into the bayou, slurping up water to boil into steam to drive the engines.

“Swim a little farther,” Husk told himself. His voice was ragged. It was hard to get words out between his gulps of breath.

The smokestacks led to rooftops and then the wooden fence around the lumberyard itself.

Now, something told him. Husk agreed.

He changed his course and made broad strokes toward the shore. As he kicked, riverbed came up underneath his feet. It stroked his foot at first, but soon he had to scrunch his shoulders to stay underwater. Husk kept swimming until he practically crawled along the muddy floor. Without changing his rhythm, he broke out of the water into a running gait.

The monster roared with its voice of mangled screams. It was behind him by only twenty yards. Already it looked huge. Its left arm dangled, and it cradled its right arm as if it was in pain. Its warped ugliness still made Husk cringe.

He poured himself into running. His clothes weighed him down. Every time he set down a foot, his boot gave a hollow squish. Still, he pressed on. He had no other choice.

At the wide gate to the lumberyard, a few men stood talking beside an empty wagon. The horse started stamping its foot and backing against the wagon. The men looked up at Husk.

“Monster!” Husk called. “Help! Monster!”

The men kept staring at him.

Husk gritted his teeth as he ran. They were no help to him. They hadn’t seen this thing before. He took a gasp and shouted, “Run!”

The horse let out a horrified whinny. It leaped forward, and the brake on the wagon gave way. Horse and wagon bolted, running up the street toward town. One man ran after it, hollering swears. The other two just kept staring at Husk with gaping mouths.

As he got closer, he realized their wide eyes were latched behind him. He risked a glance back over his shoulder.

The monster was there, bounding on its thick legs. It held two wide branches torn from a tree, shading itself with leaves that shook as it ran. Wherever the sunlight reached, its furry hide charred and gave off greenish smoke.

Husk turned back to running. Sunlight hurt it, but not enough, it seemed, to deter the monster from hunting him down. He imagined what it would do to him if it got one of its enormous hands on him. One would wrench his head from his neck, the other snap his spine.