Creepers (22 page)

Jack pulled himself up off the floor, grabbed the largest cooking pot, and slowly worked his way into the kitchen.  As he rounded the doorway, he found that the vines had engulfed the table where he had eaten only a few hours ago.  Be that as it may, Jack decided he could still reach the sink and most of the cabinet drawers.  Jack sat the pot in the sink and turned the cold water on to fill it.  While it filled with water, Jack rummaged around in several drawers until he came out with a meat cleaver.

Satisfied, Jack waited for the pot to fill and then took both it and the cleaver back into the living room.  Once again, he sat down beside Yancy and placed the pot behind him.  Jack discovered that while it was difficult to move, and he didn’t have a tremendous amount of strength; he was not tired.  Jack tapped on the floor boards with the handle of the cleaver until he found where he believed the joists to be.  He found the hollowest sounding part of the floor nearest him and took a whack at it with the cleaver.

The sharp edge of the cleaver buried itself deep into the soft pine floorboard and Jack smiled.  He was so glad that these older, poorer area homes used pine instead of hardwood for their floors.  He also surmised there might be a thin underlayment of plywood, but probably not.  Most of these old houses were built with a crawl space for plumbing, and they just laid the pine planks right down on the floor joists.  Not much of a need to worry about insulation in this part of the country, and cheap and poor usually went together.

Jack pried the cleaver out, breaking off splinters of the old dry pine.  He hacked at the floor several more times and then checked his progress with his finger.  Compared to the sweltering heat in the shut up house, it was very cool under the house, and Jack could feel it.  He smiled and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, and then started swinging the cleaver again.  Jack chopped at the floor with his right hand until he could barely lift the tool. Then he would switch to his left and do the same.

Before long, Jack had a hole in the floor about the size of a shoe box.  His heart was pounding, and his ears were ringing.  Sweat streamed down his face, and his shirt was soaked.  Jack paused then to catch his breath.  He sat upright and grabbed one of the torches.  Jack fumbled in his pocket and finally pulled out the book of matches Jesse had given him.  He tried the best he could to dry off his hands, but the heat in the house and his exertion in it made that nearly impossible.

Even so, Jack did the best he could and pulled a match from the book.  He tried to light it, but it fell apart as before.  Finally, Jack pulled off four or five matches and tried to ignite the clump of them.  Somewhere in the middle, a single match lit, and it slowly ignited the others in the bunch.  Jack dropped the nearly empty book of matches and held the lit ones up to his torch.  It caught almost instantly and again jack smiled.

He leaned over toward the hole he had hacked in the floor and lowered the torch into it.  The heat from the fire came back up the torch handle and tried to burn Jack's fingers, but he managed to turn it to the side beneath the floor.  Jack dropped the torch off to the side and could see flickering orange-yellow glow coming from the hole.  He leaned down and stuck his face in the hole so that he could see, and the relative cool of the air there bathed his face.

Jack closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the remarkably cleansing air.  After a moment he opened his eyes to see what he could see, and not see what he hoped he wouldn’t.  The dim light of the torch did not travel far, but what Jack saw was what he’d hoped for.  There were no vines beneath the house; there was no plant life at all.  Without sunlight, nothing grew there.  He suspected as much, but with this crazy stuff you just never knew.

Jack took one more deep breath and rolled over onto his back.  He exhaled a deep sigh and thought about the rest of his plan.  It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park that was for sure, but at least it was possible.  Jack allowed himself to rest for few minutes then got back onto his knees and continued chopping the floor up.  This time though he used both hands to wield the cleaver.  Before long, Jack had managed to open up a hole about the size of a large watermelon.

His intention was to make the hole large enough so that he could drag Yancy down through it into the crawl space, but the kudzu had other ideas.  There was a crash to the right as an end table on that side of the sofa fell to the ground.  While he was working, the kudzu had continued to advance and was now near the couch.  He looked over toward the kitchen and saw the first tendrils peaking around the door frame there.

“Damn,” Jack muttered to himself.  His time was up.  He was just going to have to resort to his plan B.  Jack reached over and pulled the wick out of the hurricane lamp.  He stood and slowly poured the kerosene from the lamp out into a semi-circle between them and the kudzu.  Then Jack threw the wet wick onto the sofa.  He tossed the empty lantern aside and looked down at the wool rug in front of the couch.

Jack bent down and dragged the heavy rug over to the hole he had made in the floor.  Then he grabbed the wet sheet in front of the door.  All of this work took an incredible amount of effort on Jack’s part, and he nearly collapsed onto the floor beside Yancy.  He had to take a moment to gather strength before he could continue, and the kudzu continued to creep toward his location.  It was now over the arm of the sofa and reaching out to an empty spot that only a moment ago was occupied by the rug.

Jack so wanted to rest some more, to lie down with his face in the hole and breathe in some of the cleansing air.  However, the creepers just wouldn’t allow it.  Jack sighed and got to his knees.  To a great deal of moaning, he rolled Yancy over on his stomach and positioned him so that his face was next to the hole.  Then Jack took the wet sheet and draped half of it on top of Yancy, from head to foot.  After that, Jack pulled the heavy wool rug up on top of Yancy as well.

The next step of Jack’s plan was to pour a pot of water all over the carpet.  It was slower going than Jack would have liked, but eventually he managed to saturate the carpet.  He stretched out on the floor beside Yancy and pulled the sheet up over himself too.  The cool of the wet sheet was refreshing and seemed to give Jack a little more energy.  He grabbed one of the remaining torches and stuck it down in the hole to the crawlspace and lit it with the other torch he had dropped down there earlier.  Oddly, he could have sworn he heard a generator or a lawn mower running somewhere in the distance.

Jack ignored the strange sound and pulled the lit torch out and touched it to the last of his torches.  Jack tossed the torch he was holding on the sofa then immediately grabbed up the other torch from off of the floor.  The couch touched off into flames almost instantly.  Jack quickly moved the torch he now held to the trail of kerosene he had made earlier.  The flames lapped eagerly at the fuel, and there was instantly a wall of fire between them and the creepers.

Jack didn’t stop there.  He reached as far as he could and set the remains of the coffee and end tables on fire.  Then he touched the torch to the curtains nearest him.  The last thing he did was toss the torch to the far window and the drapes there.  As the fire grew around him, Jack pulled Yancy over so that his face was now in the hole in the floor.  Then he turned so that he was on his stomach too and pulled the wet wool rug up over himself as well.  Then Jack stuck his face into the hole beside Yancy’s.

All around him he could feel the heat of the fire building.  He could also hear the occasional pop and sizzle of what he assumed was the kudzu burning.  It may have been trying to put out the fire, but Jack hoped the heat would be too intense.  It had to be, didn’t it?  Surely the kudzu couldn’t extinguish that much fire, that much heat, all at once?  Could it?  Jack hoped to hell it couldn’t and made sure that they were covered with the rug the best he could.

“Is there gas in the mower?” Terri asked, excited.

“Yes, yes there is,” Jesse replied.  “What do you have in mind Terri?”  Jesse was pretty sure he already knew, but he was also concerned about her getting that close to the creepers.

Terri said, “we can mow them down Jesse.”  She ran around the car toward the lawn mower.  “All those extensions, those tendrils,” she continued, “They have to have come from a root node, a root node that can only be as close as the nearest earth.  The closest would have to be at the edge of the porch, and I don’t think it’s even that close.  Those vines followed us from beside the house somewhere and there hasn’t been enough time for a root node to take hold.  At least I don’t think so.”

“So what are you saying exactly?” Jesse asked as her followed Terri.

“If we cut the vines after the root node,” Terri explained, “everything after it should die.  It won’t be attached to anything except what it has twined to so we should be able to move it.  We can get them out,” she said excited.

“No,” Jesse demanded, “you can’t get that close to them.  I won’t let you.”

“That’s why you need to get your rake,” Terri said.  “You use the rake to keep the vines away from me.  All I have to do is mow them down on the one end of the porch, and you should be able just to rake them away.”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said.

“It will work Jesse.” Terri continued.  “Trust me.”

Jesse thought for a moment.  He knew that he couldn’t keep her from doing it.  If she had made her mind up, Terri was going to do it.  That’s just how Terri was.  Jesse figured that all he could do was help her.  “Okay,” he finally said.  “Let me get my rakes.  I have two over by the front of the church.”

In the dark Terri knew that he was smiling.  She smiled back even though she was sure he couldn’t see it.  “Thank you, Jesse,” she said at last.  “I’ll try to get the mower started.”

“Remember to use the choke,” Jesse instructed.  He wasn’t worried about Terri starting the mower; she had used more times than he could count.  He quickly turned and jogged toward the church.  As Jesse passed by the side of his house, he could hear pounding coming from within.  He wondered then what Jack was up to. However, it was a just a passing thought as he had his own task at hand.  Jesse quickly made it to the front corner of his church.  He found the two rakes leaning up against the wall there, where he had left them.

One was a bow rake and the other a leaf rake.  Jesse grabbed both of them and hurried back to Terri.  As he passed by the side of his house, Jesse heard the pounding again, and he wondered once more what Jack might be up to.  Again, Jesse didn’t have to ponder this question long as his train of thought was interrupted by the lawn mower sputtering to life.  Panting from his exertion, Jesse paused at the corner of the porch and leaned against his bow rake.  He waited there for Terri to push the now idling mower up beside him.

“Good girl.” He managed between heavy breaths.

“I’m not all city slicker,” Terri replied.  “There’s still some country girl in me.”

“So, what do we do now?” Jesse asked as he continued to gather himself.

Terri let the mower idle and moved closer to the kudzu.  She wanted to get a better look, but it was difficult because of the dim light the night offered.  Finally, she pointed and said “I think I’m just going to run the mower into the side of the porch here.  There are going to be bits of the vine flying, and it will still be dangerous so you’ll need to be careful.  Even though we’ll be killing it, it still has the paralytic on it.”  Terri thought for a moment and then continued.  “So as I’m cutting the kudzu, can you rake the bits away from me?  And let me know if any other tendrils are moving toward me?”

“I can do that.” Jesse agreed.

“Once I have severed the connection from these vines to the root node,” Terri continued, “we should be able to rake the vines on the porch out of the way.”  At least Terri hoped that was the case.  This kudzu was unlike anything else she had ever encountered.  For all she knew, it could fly.  However, that was the only real hope she had of saving Jack.  Determined, she said, “are you ready?”

“Just let me get the leaf rake,” Jesse replied as he dropped the bow rake.  He retrieved the leaf rake and stood at the ready, in almost comical fashion.  Had the situation not been so serious, Jesse probably would have laughed at himself.  Instead, he bit his lower lip and then said “Let’s do this girl.”

Terri throttled up the lawn mower and tipped it back on its two rear wheels.  With the blade spinning furiously and the front wheels about a foot off the ground, Terri pushed the lawn mower into the kudzu.  Bits and pieces of leaves and small vines shot out on either side of the mower, and Jesse quickly raked them away from Terri.

Then Terri slowly lowered the mower deck into the thickest mass of kudzu.  Bits flew; Jesse raked, and then the mower’s engine bogged and tried to die.  Terri quickly raised the front of the mower so the engine could gather speed again, and then slowly started lowering into the kudzu again.  She repeated this process several times until she had managed to clear a space about the size of the lawn mower.

Now was where it got dangerous, Terri told herself as she advanced the mower into the void in the kudzu.  While she did so, Jesse feverishly worked at raking up the bits of the creepers that had been scattered by the mower blade.  Working in unison, the two of them quickly cleared another two feet into the sea of kudzu.  Terri was about to start on another assault when Jesse grabbed her by the shoulder.  She idled down the throttle and backed the mower out of the small path she was making.

Jesse yelled so that he could be heard above the lawn mower’s engine.  “Them creepers are moving in on you.” He shouted.  He opened his mouth as if to say something more but was silent.  Instead, he looked past Terri toward the front of his house. Terri followed his gaze and panic welled up inside her.  The curtains in the front windows were on fire, and there were flames beyond them inside the living room.

Terri left the mower and ran the few steps to the front of the house.  She stood just off the porch in front of the door and screamed “Jack!  Jack!”  However, there was no answer.  Gripped in panic and fear she shouted again.  “Jack, answer me!  What did you do Jack?  What did you do?”  Tears began to fill her eyes and stream down her cheeks.  “Jack.” She said again.

Just then, Jesse came up beside her and put an arm around her shoulder.  “He’s okay Terri,” he tried to reassure her.  “Jack must have had a plan.  It’s just not like him to set the house on fire without some scheme.  Earlier I heard pounding coming from inside the house, he must have been up to something.  Something that he thought might save them.”  Jesse thought for a moment and then said “I’m not sure what it is, but we need to continue what we’re doing.”

Terri wiped her tears away and said “you’re right Jesse.  I know you’re right.  I just wish I knew what he was up to.”

“Maybe we can get a peek inside the windows,” Jesse offered, “now that the curtains are gone that is.”

Terri nodded and silently walked back and forth trying to peer inside the windows.  She could see that much of the living room edges were engulfed in fire, as was the sofa.  However, there seemed to be a void in the fire near the front door.  She jumped up a few times trying to get a better look, and then cursed herself for her shortness.  Finally, she said “can you see anything Jesse?  There seems to be a void in the fire near the front door.”

Jesse, who was a good foot taller than Terri, craned his neck to see what he could.  “I do see something,” he reported.  “I can make out part of my living room rug piled up in a mound there.  It doesn’t seem to be burning.  It may even be wet.  I’ll bet they are under that carpet.”  With renewed vigor, Jesse moved past Terri and picked his leaf rake up.  He immediately began trying to scrape the kudzu out of the way.

Silently, Terri followed him to the idling mower.  She could see the vines had moved toward it on the side that faced the side of the house, and up at the front of the mower.  That was when Terri noticed that the vines on the other side of the mower were nearly motionless.  They still seemed to writhe and twist however their movements were slow and jerky.  Terri smiled; it was working.

Terri knew that she only needed a couple of more feet to get through to the corner of the house, and separate the porch vines from the rest of the mass of kudzu.  The problem was that the closer she got to the house the thicker the mat of vines was, and the more impenetrable the vines themselves were.  Undaunted, Terri raised the front of the mower, throttled it up, and pushed it into the kudzu.  This time though, she moved it to the side to widen the path she was cutting.

With urgency, Terri and Jesse continued their onslaught of the creeping vines.  Terri would cut, and Jesse would rake.  Soon, it came to a point where Terri could no longer raise the front wheels any higher.  With the handle of the mower nearly on the ground, Terri shoved the spinning blade into the wall of vegetation.  Almost instantly the engine caught and died.  A thick vine had entangled the motor shaft and blade.

Terri cursed herself and tried to pull the mower away, but it wouldn’t move.  She gave it several hard jerks but could not back it away from where it was stuck.  Once again, panic seeped into her.  “What do we do Jesse?” she asked.

“I have an idea.” Jesse offered.  “Here,” he said as he handed the bow rake to Terri.  “See if you can start pulling the vines away from the door.  I’ve got to get something.  Confused, Terri took the rake and slowly moved around the porch toward the front door.  Jesse dropped the rake he was using and headed off toward his church again.  A short time later he returned with a gas can.

Terri looked at him concerned.  “What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

“The house is already on fire,” Jesse said.  “We ain’t got nothing else to lose.”  With that, he opened up the can and started splashing the liquid onto the vines at the corner of the house.  It wasn’t much; there was only about a gallon left in the can, but Jesse figured it would do the trick.

“But…” Terri started, and then fell quiet.  He was right.  She turned back to the vines.  Terri found that she was able, with some effort, to pull most of the vines away from the door and porch.  She continued to pull on them until she had managed to clear a large path.  Most of the vines had devolved to minimal, jerky movements with no real sense of purpose.  Almost like a snake when you cut off its head, she thought to herself.

At the end of the porch, Jesse had dumped the last of the gasoline on the creepers and was trying to dry his hands off on his pants.  Satisfied, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the book of matches he had there.  Jesse knew that he only had two matches and offered a small prayer to the Lord.  Then he tore both matches out of the book and ran them across the striking pad.  One of the matches fell apart almost immediately, however, the second one caught and ignited them both in a flash of light.

His hands were trembling, and as carefully as he could, Jesse cupped the lit matches to protect them from any breeze or anything else that might put them out.  He slowly lowered the tiny flame to the damp earth saturated with gasoline.  The fumes of the gas took the fire and ran with it.  In a large “woof” as the gas ignited, the kudzu was instantly engulfed in fire.  It had also managed to singe the hair off of Jesse’s exposed forearms.  He backed quickly away from the heat and grabbed his rake.  Then Jesse moved over to where Terri still fought with the vines on the porch.

Jesse tried his rake, but it was useless he decided.  It simply didn’t have the strength in its tines to move the cumbersome and twined vines.  He tossed it aside and said “Let me child, I have longer arms than you and might be able to reach them better.”

Terri handed the bow rake to Jesse and said “thank you.”  She backed away and let Jesse go to work.  He was a man on a mission; Terri decided.  He dove into the vines with all of his effort and yanked and pulled them away from the house.  The vines snapped and broke as he pulled on them, and it made Terri happy.  Happier than she thought it should have.  It was just a plant, Terri reminded herself.  It was just a plant, but it didn’t feel that way. 

Terri brushed those thoughts aside and picked up Jesse’s leaf rake.  She started to move the detached vines off to the side, widening the pathway Jesse was creating.  As they worked, the fire worked on the vines.  Terri could see that Jesse was able to pull away the vines that had nestled up against the door with relative ease.  They didn’t seem to struggle or fight back as they had earlier.  Terri glanced over at the fire that was now climbing up the corner of the house and starting to burn the porch.

The kudzu had retreated away from the heat and flames, leaving the vines on the porch to wither and die.  It reminded Terri of the blue tailed lizard’s tail when it was pulled away from the body.  It would twitch and wriggle, keeping the attention of the predator, allowing the lizard to escape.  Terri wondered momentarily if something like that might not be happening here.  After all that had happened, she was still amazed by the kudzu.

Her scientific curiosity was suddenly put aside when a loud pop from the fire consuming the old dried wood of the porch garnered her attention.  Terri looked up from whence the noise came and saw that the fire was devouring the roof of the porch.  The flames lapped at the wood like a hungry cat lapped up a saucer of milk.  The heat and the smoke billowed out from beneath the covered porch, and it stung Terri’s eyes.