Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (15 page)

Verna had set up four long tables on the walkway next to the street and covered them with heaping mounds of barbeque in foil pans. A permanent line of people crowded the tables, the queue moving quickly but never getting any shorter.

My stomach clenched smelling the food, but I doubted that Verna would be glad to see us today. So I sat next to Anne and Chuck on the other side of the street and sipped at a plastic cup full of sweet tea.

We were close to the traffic cones on this end of the street, which would give us a nice view of the bonfire when it started. Construction was already underway a few yards past the cones, where Main street divided around a twenty-foot-wide raised brick circle. Most of the year, the circle contained a flower bed that was maintained by the local Rotary Club. At Christmas the town used the space to set up an enormous tree covered in lights. And at the annual Halloween party, they built the bonfire in it.

A handful of men passed long branches brigade-style between the circle and a nearby pickup truck. Other men stacked them vertically into a tall teepee, the branches bound together with baling wire to keep the structure upright while burning. It would be about fifteen feet tall when completed, but once lit the flames would go considerably higher than that.

“Anne?”

I looked up to see Nell standing next to our table carrying a plastic cafeteria tray with three plates of barbeque on it.

Anne smiled at her. “Hi, Nell.”

Nell set the plates down, one in front of each of us. “Momma sent these over. She said you all looked hungry.” She put a hand on Anne’s shoulder. “Sometimes I think the only way she knows how to apologize is with food.”

Anne jumped up and hugged her. “Tell her thanks for me.” She looked a little misty-eyed when she said it.

Nell sat down. “Maybe you should tell her. I’d be a good way to break the ice, you know?”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Nell looked around and then leaned close. “Are you wearing that gun right now?”

Anne sighed. “Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Not for me. You carry it all the time? Like even at the grocery store?”

“All the time. I’ve been doing it all my life. It’s kind of a family tradition, I guess you’d say.”

Nell raised her eyebrows and smiled. “And you never get in trouble?”

Anne laughed a little. “Define trouble.”

“I mean with the law.”

“Not so far. I have a permit to carry. Nell, what’s this about?”

“Are you any good?”

“State champion three years running when I was competing, and more quickdraw and trickshot trophies than I can count.”

Nell glanced across the street at her mother. “Can you teach me?”

Anne looked up in surprise and delight. “Of course, Nell. I’d love that!” Then her face took on a more serious cast. “This isn’t about hurting someone, is it?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just, when I saw you yesterday, and you made KC back down, hell made him run, I realized that all this time I’d been letting him make me afraid, and I didn’t have to. The last time he laid hands on me, I couldn’t see out of my left eye for a week. That’s when I packed up and left. But he made a point to come to the diner all the time, just to see me flinch. I guess I never figured out that I was letting him do it.”

Anne put one hand gently on her arm. “It’s okay, he’s gone now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“I heard. But all that means is that there’s someone even worse out there now.”

“I learned recently that guns can’t protect you from everything. You’re always going to be vulnerable. You can’t hide behind them.”

Nell picked up her tray and stood up. “But a little shelter is better than none, right?”

“I guess so.”

She walked away, back to Verna’s side.

I plucked a slice of brisket from Anne’s plate and dropped it onto my now empty one. “You going to give her some lessons?”

Anne shrugged. “I think I am. You going to try and talk me out of it?”

“Not a chance. Verna probably won’t like it, though.”

Anne shrugged as if she didn’t care and went back to scanning the crowd while we ate. Verna’s peace offering of smoked brisket and potato salad was an apology in the same way that a million dollar check is a thank you note. It was glorious. I tried to sneak a slice off of Chuck’s plate after I inhaled mine, but he fended me off with a plastic fork clenched in one fist.

Dusk fell softly across the party as the sun fell past the horizon. Pools of light reached out from the storefronts lining the street, providing a just the right illumination for a party.

I caught a sour whiff of lighter fluid as the bonfire builders completed the last of their preparations by soaking the bottom of the pile and the twist of rag sticking out of it.

Chuck nudged me and pointed at Sheriff Owen, who was pushing his way through the crowd, smiling and waving. He greeted everyone by name and recieved cheers and slaps on the back as he passed.

He nodded at us when he stepped past our table, then walked through the cones to stand next to the bonfire. One of the men there handed him a lighter. The crowd hushed when he held his hands up.

“Happy Halloween, folks! You about ready to get this shindig started?” The crowd clapped and whistled and stomped their feet. “Well all right, then!”

He bent down and lit the rag. Blue and yellow flames curled up the fuel-soaked cloth and then raced around the bottom of the teepee. Thunderous applause greeted the flames.

The fire grew to a blaze in less than a minute, throwing yellow light across the faces of the crowd. The band started back up.

Anne stiffened and sat up straight. “Abe ...”

Prime rolled out from under the pickup truck next to the bonfire and leapt at Owen, catching him from behind.

Prime looked directly at me as he put one arm around Owen’s chest and one rough wooden hand around his neck. I threw myself out of my seat and ran for the stage, but I was too far away.

In front of two hundred men, women, and children, Prime tore Owen’s living head from his body.

25

W
ithout pause, Prime hurled the head into the bonfire. It crashed through the ashy, brittle sticks and slammed into the cherry-red coal bed at the center in an explosion of sparks.

The bonfire hissed and spat as flames began to crawl into the night sky. The heat doubled and redoubled, forcing everyone near this end of the street to shield their faces and stumble blindly backwards.

The gyrating flames congealed into a fat column that continued to rise as the fire became more intense. Burning threads radiated from the top, thickening into branches that reached outward until the tips scorched the buildings on either side of the street. Leaves of flickering light sprouted on the branches until the entire top blazed in an incandescant halo.

Blinding light and blistering heat washed over me as the tree of flame grew until it threatened to consume everything near it. I lost sight of Prime in the conflagration, seemingly swallowed up by the expanding trunk.

Panic filled our end of the street as the crowd surged back against the crush of people in the center who weren’t aware of the sheriff’s death and were now pushing forward to try and see what was happening. Those that managed to satisfy their curiosity immediately joined the terrified pack trying to get away.

For an instant, the tree wavered and became something else, something lumpen and misshapen and not tree-like in the slightest. Then it gave one last surge of crackling heat and guttered out. The brick circle in the middle of Main street glowed from the heat and the surrounding asphalt was liquid and glossy.

Standing in the ashes of the now consumed bonfire was Prime, blackened and smoking, but alive. Bright sparks crawled along his body while ashy flakes drifted from his limbs as he stepped out of the circle.

I shuddered to think what Leon had just gone through in his jail cell across town.

A few scant yards now separated me from Prime. No distance at all to cover at the speed I was moving. In seconds I had dodged around the last of the frantic people between us and closed the gap, my hands open and grasping.

He ignored me and jumped towards the mass of panicked people, sailing over my head in a long arc. There was a sickening crunch when he landed in the center of the packed crowd, heedlessly crushing the people standing there. I refused to do the same by leaping after him.

I pushed into the crowd, careful with how much pressure I used as I tried to head upstream of the fleeing mob. I was making slow progress, still only halfway to Prime, when I heard my name.

“Abe!” Anne was standing on top of our table next to Chuck, pistol in hand. From the looks of it, she had been shouting for some time, but I could barely hear her over the screaming.

When our eyes met, she touched her nose with her finger, then waved it around her head in a big circle. Not a good sign.

I climbed the nearest table so that I could see over the crowd and immediately discovered why they hadn’t dispersed yet. Surrounding us on every side were wooden men, arms outstretched and linked to form a terrifying barrier. There were dozens of them, many sporting identical distorted, leering faces. People trying to run past them were thrown back into the crowd with brutal efficiency.

I turned back towards Prime, who now stood a head taller than everyone else. I hadn’t noticed before, but the fire had changed him, making him larger than Leon’s six-foot frame.

A tiny ring of open space surrounded him as people fought to get away.

Prime’s torso split down the center and his head, shoulders, and arms began to droop backwards as he unfolded like a macabre flower. His insides were a rippling black mass that glistened under the streetlights. The inner surface of his body, now peeled back and facing outwards, was covered entirely in a thick sheet of needle-sharp thorns.

And then I knew why the wooden men were here in force and why Prime was using them to keep the crowd packed in tight. And there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it.

Back in my army days as a sergeant, I could always make myself heard when I needed to. But now, with the strength of my new body, my lungs and vocal cords could produce sound levels that were beyond human.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and bellowed. “Get down!”

The people around me flinched and covered their ears, but the rest of the crowd didn’t react. They heard me, they just weren’t able to focus on what I was saying. At least Anne and Chuck reacted in time, diving off of their table and out of sight.

I yanked my own table up like a shield at the last second, trying to cover as many people as possible.

There was a ripping sound, like tearing silk, and staccato vibrations reached me through the table. I lowered it and saw that the front was peppered with thorns that were buried half an inch into the wood.

A new sound drowned out the panicked screams from the crowd. Anguished shrieks filled the air, an animal keening that erupted from the throats of those stricken by Prime’s thorns. They lay on the ground by the dozens, clutching at themselves and writhing, mouths stretched impossibly wide as the tiny spheres on the end of the thorns began to drain their blood. And their souls.

On cue, the wooden men surged into the crowd from all directions. They broke bones with their hard wooden fists and cut deep into flesh with their jagged fingertips. Nobody got past them.

There was no way I could deal with all of the wooden men. There were easily fifty or more of the grotesque things attacking the crowd. But Prime was here and we had unfinished business. Hunger leapt into my fist as I charged through the thinning crowd towards him.

He was twenty yards away, his chest sealing together into its original shape. He turned to face me with a wide grin, showing a mouthful of thorns.

A wooden man to my right ran at me. Hunger connected with a solid crunch and sent it spinning away. Two more ran at me from either side and one slammed into my back.

I tore one free just as another wrapped itself around my legs. I fell. More of the things piled on top of me, clutching at my arms and legs and digging into me with their misshapen hands.