Stories (2011) (77 page)

Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking
nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly there
seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing of
Gimet's bees was ferocious.

Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it.
Gimet was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of the
window.

Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the
beast full in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into
flames and soaked Gimet's back, causing a wave of fire to climb from the
thing's waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of bees, dropping them
from the sky like exhausted meteors.

Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There was a
howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.

Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy
followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet, flame-wrapped,
streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.

"I panicked a little," Jebidiah said. "I
should have been more resolute. Now he's escaped."

"I never even got off a shot," the deputy said.
"God, but you're fast. What a draw."

"Look, you stay here if you like. I'm going after him.
But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out."

The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and
there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.

"What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first
place?"

"Evil," Jebidiah said. "When he got close,
the pages broke into flame. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as
with most of God's blessings, it doesn't last long."

"I stay here, you'd have to put down more pages."

"I'll be taking the Bible with me. I might need
it."

"Then I guess I'll be sticking."

–•–

They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They
could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool
and silent as the graves on the hill.

Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden
crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see
that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into
the ground.

Jebidiah paused there. "He's made this old grave his
den. Dug it out and dug deeper."

"How do you know?" the deputy asked.

"Experience . . . and it smells of smoke and burned
skin. He crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little."

Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak
of pink on the horizon. "He's running out of daylight, and soon he'll be
out of moon. For a while."

"He damn sure surprised me. Why don't we let him hide?
You could come back when the moon isn't full, or even half full. Back in the
daylight, get him then."

"I'm here now. And it's my job."

"That's one hell of a job you got, mister."

"I'm going to climb down for a better look."

"Help yourself."

Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave,
moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees and
stuck the match and his head into the opening.

"Very large," he said, pulling his head out.
"I can smell him. I'm going to have to go in."

"What about me?"

"You keep guard at the lip of the grave," Jebidiah
said, standing. "He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out
behind you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we
speak."

"That's wonderful."

Jebidiah dropped the now-dead match on the ground. "I
will tell you this. I can't guarantee success. I lose, he'll come for you, you
can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William
Tell's arrows."

"I'm not really that good a shot."

"I'm sorry," Jebidiah said, and struck another
match along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand drew one of
his revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the
hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.

"Ain't you gonna need some light?" the deputy
said. "A match ain't nothin'."

"I'll have it." Jebidiah removed the remains of
the Bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in
his coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow.
The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.

"Ain't your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?"
the deputy asked.

"As long as I hold it or it's on my person, it won't
harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it'll
blaze. I got to hurry, boy."

With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.

–•–

In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push
the Bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light
would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still, it would
not last long.

After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow
dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the
sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which, in fact, greased his path as he slid
along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look
about. The last flames of the Bible burned out with a puff of blue light and a
sound like an old man breathing his last.

Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could
hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up the
night sky let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.

Jebidiah's ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the
cave floor.

Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn't think it
was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor,
and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back
of Jebidiah's neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up
and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh.
Jebidiah's knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket,
produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.

At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly lit
in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull. It snarled
and darted forward.

Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his shirt front as he
fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave a brief, bright flare and
was gone. At the same time, the match was knocked out of his hand and Jebidiah
was knocked backwards, onto his back, the thing's claws at his throat. The
monster's bees stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his
flesh. He stuck the revolver into the creature's body and fired. Once. Twice.
Three times. A fourth.

Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already
fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders, and the
thing still had hold of him.

He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the
thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The
bats fluttered and screeched.

Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his
feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.

Jebidiah found another match, struck it.

The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock.
Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a
dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the
cavern floor. The hive in Gimet's chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black
knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn't move.

Couldn't move.

Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the
pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot
exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to
flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of
the night.

Gimet's claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him,
then he was still and Jebidiah's match went out.

–•–

Jebidiah found the remains of the Bible in his pocket, and
as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the two
pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped
them into Gimet's open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and
popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up
bright as day.

Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical
fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed through
it, came up in the grave.

He looked for the deputy and didn't see him. He climbed out
of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted until
the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had bolted.

Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of
the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon was fading
and the pink on the horizon was widening.

Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was
done.

At least for one brief moment.

Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the
brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy's horse was gone, of
course, the deputy most likely having already finished out Deadman's Road at a
high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches, perhaps to have a long drink of whisky
and turn in his badge.

The smooth silver rockets stood against the sky, silent
sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those
spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside
of Mud Creek. He never knew rightly how they got there but their open mouths
and wide eyes turned ever skyward seemed connected somehow, since the rockets
never rusted and the moss never grew over the expectant stone features. They
were always bright with the morning light or copper red with the dying sun. He
liked them best when they glowed silver in the moonlight or burned like white
gold when the moon vanished blindly behind clouds.

And though the rockets seemed ready for takeoff at any time
of day or night, there was no one to ride in them. And no one had anything to
do with them except him, James Leroy Carver, the self-appointed guardian of the
town and the rockets—although what he did wouldn't pass for much and there was
never anyone to pat him on the back and say, "Good job, Jim, good
job!"

For that matter, there was hardly anyone left at all. There
was Sleepy Sam who worked the fields with the help of his son, Cranky Dan'l,
and Issy, a big spotted hound dog, two cows, a goat, two hogs and some
chickens. They lived in a farmhouse that used to be white but was now faded into
mottled gray. They also had a barn with a tin roof and some pitiful
outbuildings they took care of just about as good as they took care of the
vegetable garden that was surrounded by barbed wire—fair-to-middling. There
used to be a horse but it died of old age. They gave Jim eggs, carrots, onions
and potatoes when he helped out. He had to barter for anything else.

Behind and beyond the spaceships, the trees had started to
come back, and Jim realized he had lived practically his entire life (how long
that was he had no expert opinion) watching them return. First, they'd just
been scorched sprouts, but somehow their roots had survived and given bloom to
new life. Gradually, they inched up until they were almost taller than Jim.
Lately, they'd grown as big as one of the sheds at Sleepy Sam's. It amazed him.
Didn't seem quite right.

Were trees supposed to grow that fast?

The world was coming back green, and he felt like there was
nothing much left
but
the green. His parents were long dead now. The
Revolution had taken them.

Back in the before time, the bad times when he was really
small, he hid more than anything.

The people who survived the fighting didn't seem much
interested in him. Sometimes someone would take him in and feed him. Sometimes
he'd just steal food. He stole so little, no one much minded. One time an ugly
man—an outsider who talked funny—tried to take him outside of town on his bike
but Jim cut him with his knife and bit him for good measure and escaped. And
then Sleepy Sam had killed him after a poker game went wrong and the man
refused to hand over his bike. Jim never knew the drifter's name. He hadn't
been a regular in Mud Creek and certainly not on his street.

Part of the street sign had broken off so he couldn't quite
remember the whole name of the street. Something Heights. His mom had had a
book called
Wuthering Heights
that she liked a lot. "Nobody ever
wrote a book as good as
Wuthering Heights
." Funny how things stuck
in a person's head. Jim took to calling his place "Wuthering
Heights," although most of the house had burned down during the Revolution
when his parents ran off and left him or were killed.

He couldn't remember anything. Seemed his life began one day
when he woke up in the back seat of the SUV, head on his plaid backpack, sucking
his thumb and holding on to his old brown teddy and his blue blankie and his
crackers. He loved his warm sleeping space in the family's unworkable SUV that
was parked in what was left of the garage. He had been old enough then to
survive.

And, in time, there was no one really hunting boy meat
anymore, or anybody doing much of anything. Sleepy Sam said the cannibals
focused on the still-crowded cities, not on the dead little towns or out here
on the fringe—that's what Sleepy Sam said. Jim thought that suited him just
fine out here by the rockets. And as far as it went, he was okay. Cannibals
didn't like rockets, he guessed. Can't eat rockets. And they didn't seem to
like any meat but human meat.