Hellfire (14 page)

Everyone joined in, shrieking between gasps of bitter air as they ran. Husk shouted, too, holding his revolver above his head. Something about the camaraderie of the cry filled his long limbs with bloodlust. The monster had torn apart two men as if they were rag dolls. Thompkins was right in saying it had to be stopped.

A wave of men tackled the beast. It spun around and fought back, knocking men aside with the backs of its huge arms. Husk pressed forward alongside Thompkins and Hudson.

Men made a few slashes before being knocked away. The monster slowed down now, and Husk thought he saw blood on its legs and arms where the blades had met it. Then he realized it was red blood splashed from what it did to those first two men. Husk’s pace slowed a little.

Thompkins was the first man he knew to approach the monster. He had his long rifle turned upside-down, using the wooden butt as a club, like men were said to do in the Blackhawk Wars up north. He laid a firm blow where the monster’s shoulder met its neck, which was as far up as he could reach.

Husk stopped charging altogether and gaped up at the monster. Someone had described it as eight feet tall, and suddenly that seemed like a gross underestimate.

The monster swung a fist at Thompkins, knocking him down with a single blow. He collapsed into the growing pile of men’s bodies.

Hudson was there with a long Bowie knife and shrieked as he ran. He lunged, and his blade found a home in the monster’s wide right leg. Its roar rose an octave.

One of its massive hands reached down and scooped Hudson up, lifting him completely off the ground. The man’s bushy eyebrows were practically buried in his hair as he let out a wide-eyed scream. It raised Hudson up like a man readying to throw a ball.

Husk jumped back into his charging pace. “Leave him alone!”

Before the monster could throw, Husk stuck his revolver right into its tumor-ridden face and let fly all four remaining shots. Each one dug deep into the squishy flesh, and the monster reeled. It dropped Hudson, and Husk had to dodge out of the way.

The shorter man landed near the others who had fallen. He shifted onto his knees, and then fell over. He didn’t get up.

Something hit Husk hard from the side. The air flew out of his lungs as the world swirled around him, flashing brown from the dirt to green and blue in the sky and back. Rocks and sticks jabbed him with each turn until he gradually stopped.

When he sat up, he found himself in the middle of the clearing. His hand managed to hold onto the revolver with his long finger stuck in the guard. He shook it loose and sat breathing for a moment, sucking in horrid-tasting breaths of smoke and the monster’s stench.

Husk looked around him slowly. Most of the men had either fled after they received their first wallop or were lying in various shapes on the ground. A few still fought the monster, staying out of its reach and jabbing it from different angles with their blades. Periodic shots of gunfire rang from those who had stayed out of the charge to reload.

The volley made the monster stumble backward, and the man with the boar-hunting spear who had marched in front of Thompkins lunged forward. He buried it deep into the monster’s forearm, driving the first tine in until the second stuck as well.

The monster made a frightened yip and fell back. The man held tight and kept pushing. When the monster tried to push back, the tines only drove deeper.

Husk blinked at the smoke. A spear shouldn’t have done nearly as much damage as a whole onslaught of high-velocity lead. Hitting it seemed to hurt it more than shooting it. Nothing about the monster made any sense. He imagined it must be a nightmare, and he hoped he would awaken soon.

“Boy, you good with that gun there?” a voice asked.

Husk spun around, trying to find its owner. There was Pike, crawling on his hands and knees toward him. His long hair was disheveled, and dirt covered his face and chest.

Husk looked down at his LeMat but couldn’t seem to think of an answer.

“I saw how you stunned him with that volley to the face,” Pike said. “Think you can reload and do it again?”

Husk nodded.

“Speak up!” Pike shouted. “Can you?”

The world suddenly seemed clearer, as if Husk had awakened after all. “I can!”

“Good.” Pike held up a fresh length of cord, tied in a lasso loop. “You stun him, and I’m going to see if I can rope him around the neck. Maybe we can get him caught around a tree and limit him.”

“Okay,” Husk agreed and emptied out the spent caps. He dug into his coat and pulled out the bag of caps and balls. His suit’s shoulder was ripped at the seams, and he doubted he would ever get the brown stains washed out, even if he lived to do his laundry.

“Let’s go!” Pike called.

Husk didn’t let himself stop to think; that would only slow him down. He slipped the caps and balls into the LeMat’s cylinder. He blinked at the ninth chamber and then loaded it, too, followed by the grapeshot round in the central barrel. There was no need to hold anything back. The revolver went back together with a click.

Pike was on his feet with the lasso in his hands. “Ready?”

More gunfire rang, and a man in the distance gave a horrible shout alongside the crack of a breaking limb.

Husk let out a loud whoop that filled his blood with courage. He jumped up and charged the monster again.

It swatted seemingly at random with its good arm; the boar-spear was deep in the other, even if the man behind it had fallen. There were only three men still standing, two who had bayonets at the end of their muskets and one with a machete.

Why? Husk wondered as he ran. Why is the spear so effective?

He cleared his mind as he approached the monster. There would be time to puzzle over it later. He hoped.

Husk cried “Yeow!”, brought up his gun, and let the first shot fly right into the monster’s gaping mouth. He imagined he could see the ball crack directly into one of the pointed shark’s teeth.

The monster grunted.

More cries and more shots followed. Husk tried to keep count, watching as the balls slapped against the fleshy folds or fell into the deep crevices that may or may not have had eyes. The monster flung its good hand in front of its face, trying to wave the shots off as if they were a pesky insect.

Husk’s gun clicked empty. His boots skidded along the blood-spattered ground as he stopped his charge.

Behind the monster, Pike stood ready with the lasso. He threw, and it caught the monster’s arm instead of its neck.

Husk bit his lip. It wasn’t the initial plan, but maybe it would work well enough.

Pike pulled it taut and ran toward the twisted oak. The monster pulled back against the cord, and Pike fed it line. There wasn’t too much extra to give.

“Fine,” Husk said to himself. “I’ll do something.”

He jumped back into the charge and cried, “This one’s for Thompkins!”

Holding the revolver with both hands, he used his thumbs to click the switch to the grapeshot round. Then he squeezed the trigger.

He was only a yard or two from the monster when it went off. Husk had thought his ears were used to the sound of gunfire thanks to the battle, but this was a thunderous new bang. The gun kicked back so hard that it knocked him off balance. If he hadn’t been holding it with both hands, he probably would have broken his wrist.

Husk landed backside-first on top of someone. The body shifted under him, and he was thankful to hear breathing.

He sat up in time to see Pike make a flying leap around the far side of the tree. The cord caught against the scaly bark and pulled him like a swing. Pike’s coat flared out behind him like a cape in an Alexandre Dumas story. He rode the force of his jump all the way around the wide oak trunk to the other side, where he landed with a crunch of earth and rocks beneath his boots. Pike did a flip and waved his arms like a magician, using the remaining cord to tie a lariat knot.

Husk spun his head around toward the monster. It staggered a step backward, but it remained standing. He could see fresh dents in its malformed face where the grapeshot had torn into its flesh, yet it didn’t seem to bleed. The arm with the boar spear in it hung limp. It tried to reach up to scratch its face with the lassoed hand, but the cord caught.

The monster grunted and tugged. The cord stayed firm.

“Wahoo!” Pike called, throwing both of his free hands into the air.

The other three men still standing let out similar whoops of victory.

Husk just made a stifled cough and offered an open-mouthed grin. They had caught the monster. After all that carnage, they had it right where they needed it. Now the four of them could—

A loud crack interrupted his thoughts. Husk felt his grin disappear.

The monster kept pulling on the cord, and the decaying oak began to give way. The trunk itself gave no sign of movement, but the shadows below the branches were waving. Husk glanced up to see them gradually shift toward him. The tree began to fall.

“No! No, no, no,” Husk cried. He tried to dig out more ammunition from his coat, but his hands had begun shaking so badly he couldn’t get his fingers into the pocket.

The three men charged the monster. Two dove headlong with their bayonets into the lower part of its torso, pushing deep beneath the matted fur. The third ran howling with his machete above his head and chopped on the monster’s outstretched arm. Gray pus oozed out instead of blood.

The monster roared with a voice like a crowd of screams. Even with the spear in it, the dead arm was still as good as a club. It smashed the man with the bayonet straight on the head, sending him crumpling to the ground. The other saw the hit and ducked, slipping around to the monster’s backside.

It ignored them and went back to pulling on the cord

Pike had rushed to the tree itself, where he yanked the cord down a bit at a time toward the tree’s strongest point at its base. The leather grunted with each shifting pull.

Husk finished loading a round of grapeshot despite his shaky fingers. He had only ever packed two in his ammunition wallet. One and a spare was the most he could ever imagine needing even in a dangerous situation. If he had known he was going to be fighting a monster, he would have packed one of the US Army’s bullwagons.

Pike was still at the tree, and the men with the bayonets were at the monster’s back. Husk could see them around the blood-spattered fur, which meant his grapeshot could find them, too. He’d have to get closer if he were going to get a clean shot.

He never got the chance. As Husk took the first step, there was a tremendous groan followed by a dull crack. He froze.

The decayed oak simply gave up. Its trunk buckled, collapsing in on itself and shooting splinters in every direction. The cord wrapped tight, catching Pike’s gloved hands in it. He didn’t scream, but he looked upward as the whole trunk slid off its base and onto him.

The rest of the tree came down on top of the monster, the men with bayonets, and the unconscious and wounded on the ground. Husk turned on his feet and ran as fast as his long legs could carry him. Shadows flew across his vision. The branches smacked against the back of his neck, soft twigs at first and then heavy as limbs struck him. They knocked him down, but he had gotten up to such a speed that it bowled him over and threw him out of the way.

The clearing spun around his eyes again until he came to a stop beyond the mouth of the monster’s burrow. Reeking air filled his lungs from the half-eaten animals strewn about. He wanted to lay still and rest. Maybe he could even fall asleep.

A soft growl sounded, and he bolted up into a sitting position. The tree branches were moving.

What had once been the high end of the clearing was now a huge pile of brush. Pike had been crushed under the trunk. Husk didn’t know what happened to the other men. They had been in the middle, where now a shape moved among the twisted broken branches.

Husk swallowed. He felt for his revolver, but it was gone.

Panicked breaths filled his lungs with the acrid air. He looked over the floor of the clearing and found the gun at the edge of the branches. He’d have to go near the shifting brush to get it.

“I have to have it,” Husk told himself.

He gradually pulled himself back onto his feet. Husk walked low, practically crawling along the ground. Twigs snapped and branches cracked as the brush shifted in front of him. His gun was only a yard away, and he reached out for it, not wanting to bring his body any closer than he had to. His fingers touched the warm metal. He snatched it up and held the gun close.

The brush suddenly erupted in broken wood and splinters. The monster’s twisted face appeared just before him. It dropped its low-hanging jaw and gave a screaming roar. The force of the roar blew Husk’s hair back. The sulfurous breath stung his eyes.

There was no time to be afraid. Husk whipped up his gun and pulled the trigger. The whole round of grapeshot went straight into the monster’s mouth. His ears rang so badly he hardly heard the round go off.

The monster’s eyes went wide, practically bulging out of the fleshy folds that surrounded them. It clamped its mouth shut and fell back into the branches, hacking and coughing.

Husk tried to drop the gun, but it wouldn’t leave his grip. The force of the blast had jammed his knuckles. They would probably be swollen tomorrow, but he needed to worry about the present. It was just him and the monster now.