Dark Harvest, page 10
And then it’s like someone shook up the whole damn world and popped the cap. Boom! The sound sucks any words the kid had left in him right out of his mouth, and the concussion nearly knocks him flat-ass on the blacktop.
But Ricks barely notices. He’s too busy watching a fireball climb the ladder of the night like a demon laying siege to Heaven. He’s watching that fire paint the sky, and everything beneath it—the silent houses, the hard cold streets, the white hood of his patrol car.
Something plows through the orange glow. Two dead-white headlights spear Ricks’s retinas. He squints but doesn’t look away as a car burns by. Maybe it’s a Chevy…or a Chrysler…
“Jesus Christ—it’s him!” the kid shouts. “It’s the October Boy! He boosted Mitch Crenshaw’s ride!”
Ricks eyeballs the rearview as the Chrysler’s taillights swim away in the murk. The driver’s making tracks, heading downtown…where there’s probably not a kid in sight anymore…where the only thing to stop him is a used-up crybaby with a riot gun.
Ricks knows he can’t count on that.
He looks at his watch. It’s twenty-five minutes to midnight.
He shoots a glance at the swollen-faced kid that is all business.
“Get in,” he says. “Now.”
The kid’s jaw drops open, but no words come out. He runs around to the shotgun side of the patrol car, fills the space with his sizable ass and slams the door. Ricks peels out just that fast, trailing those taillights swimming away in the dark.
Between that Chrysler and the pair of hands strangling the patrol car’s steering wheel, Ricks’s reflection floats on the windshield—his narrow face painted in dashboard green glow, the tip of his cigarette glowing like a fuse. Ricks glances over at the kid. The big dope doesn’t look like a winner. If he’s got anything in common with the other young bucks who ended up in that cornfield with a couple ounces of lead ricocheting around in their brainpans, he’s doing a pretty solid job of hiding it.
But the way things are turning out, he’ll have to do.
“I don’t have time to draw you a diagram,” Ricks says.
Then he tosses his pistol into the kid’s lap.
The October Boy is just about to cross the railroad tracks when something rams the Chrysler’s rear bumper.
The Boy glances in the rearview but doesn’t see a thing. Just as he realizes his pursuer must be running dark, a pair of high beams scald him from behind. Top that off with a screaming siren and a big ripe cherry that blooms on top of the car that’s tail-grabbing his ass, and the Boy finally gets a clue.
The prowl car rams him again, and Jim Shepard’s pumpkin head whiplashes on his braided-vine neck like it’s ready to come off. Gotta be Jerry Ricks on his backside. Only that crazy bastard would pull a stunt like this.
The Boy mashes the gas pedal. The Chrysler rockets forward, but the police cruiser stays right there with him—the space between the two cars isn’t even as wide as a coffin. Both cars pass beneath a streetlight and the Boy catches a quick glimpse of Ricks. For a second the cop is boxed up in the confines of the Chrysler’s rearview, his forehead creased above a cold pair of eyes, a cigarette pinched between his lips, the tip of that cig glowing like he’s sucking on a red-hot coal—
Bam! Another jolt. The Boy grapples with the wheel and pulls the Chrysler out of a skid, but it’s hard to do the job when your hands are only a collection of vines. Still, he manages it, and his foot is hard on the gas like those severed tangles have grown around the pedal and set root in the floorboards. We’re talking planted.
Another glance in the rearview. Another streetlight illuminates the prowl car’s interior. Ricks is smiling now. He’s not alone in the car. For the first time the Boy notices that the cop has a passenger, a kid who’s leaning out the window—
Three quick flashes from behind. Three hard pops sound in the night, but the October Boy doesn’t hear them. He only hears the sound of shattering glass as the Chrysler’s rear window explodes. Bullets scream through the cab. One rips through the Boy’s shoulder, another trenches the rind of his face, and the third doesn’t hit anything but the front windshield…which shatters like a wall of ice.
Chunks of glass splatter Jim Shepard’s freakshow hands. He whips the wheel to the side as two more shots ring out, and he doesn’t even have time to wonder where the bullets went. Main Street is only a couple blocks ahead. A hard right turn and another hundred yards beyond that…well, that’s where you’ll find the old brick church.
He’s almost there.
The cold night wind blasts through the broken window. It whips around the cab, nearly snuffing the autumn fire in the Boy’s carved head, but he won’t let that happen. No way. Not now. He’s really hauling ass. Going seventy. He knows he’s only got one chance. He’s got to punch the brakes just right, then hang on through the turn, and—
Now. He’s got to do it now.
Jim’s knotted foot jams the brake. He whips the steering wheel to the right just as Ricks jackhammers the Chrysler’s rear bumper one last time. The steering wheel whipsaws out of the Boy’s hands, yanking off a couple of his fingers as if they were ripe carrots. The wheel spins left as the two cars part and the Chrysler’s rear bumper tears loose, sparking against the blacktop, disappearing beneath the tires of the prowl car like a gleaming switchblade driven into the belly of a two-tone cat.
The front tires blow. The bumper chews undercarriage. Jerry Ricks tears at the steering wheel, because somehow a streetlamp has ended up in the middle of the road and it looks like there’s a brick wall behind it…and if you had time for a little Q&A session, the October Boy would surely tell you that a streetlamp and a brick wall sound like a pretty sweet deal to him, because the Chrysler’s not on four wheels anymore. No. It’s on two…until the road slams the driver’s side door, and the side window blows out, and the hardtop screams as the Chrysler goes ass over teakettle while the laws of physics grind their heels into the October Boy’s best-laid plans—
A couple ticks of the second hand, and two cars are totaled.
It’s quiet for twenty seconds. Maybe thirty.
In that time, Jim Shepard’s buried in a dark place, like a seed planted too deep in the ground. It’s not a new sensation. In fact, it’s much too familiar. For Jim remembers the cornfield…and Jerry Ricks’s pistol against his head…and the sound of shovels filling his grave with hard black earth.
So he fights through the darkness, battling for clarity the same way a green tendril tunnels through earth to find the sun. The shadows disappear for a second, and then they’re back. A flash of October light, and then another, and Jim sees his carved features projected on the black upholstery a few feet from his face.
Jim reaches for that reverse silhouette with a right hand that’s short two fingers, but his arm gives up and his hand slaps against his chest like a fistful of chaff. The Chrysler’s upside down. Jim’s flat on his back against the hardtop. An electric sizzle pulses in his head, projecting flickering light on that upholstery above—Jim’s smile and eyes wink out in time to the sizzle, his arrowhead gash of a nose blinking like a bad bulb in a string of party lights.
Jim can’t do much more than lie there. His eyes wink in, wink out. His smile comes and goes. And there’s a new feature, one he can chalk up to the accident—a jagged crack running from the stem at the top of his head, through his right eye, into one corner of his grin. The wound flashes like a lightning bolt against the upholstery. Again…and again…and again…
And it stabs Jim now. The next flash bucks through his body as the crack strobes on the seat above. His body spasms again, as if his muscles were corded with stripped electrical wire rather than pumpkin vine and someone just plugged him into a live socket. Jesus. He feels like some old movie monster—like Frankenstein riding the lightning one more time…only it’s not working the way it’s supposed to…the juice is burning him up instead of firing his battery.
Jolt. Jim’s right hand flaps against his chest like a hooked fish.
Jolt. Candy wrappers rustle inside him like wastepaper balled up in a giant fist.
Jolt. Jim tries to roll over. God, he wishes he could roll over. But he can’t even seem to move his hand now. It’s there on his chest, glued to a hole carved in his shoulder by one of the kid’s bullets, a hole that’s leaking sticky nougat and marshmallow cream all over his denim jacket.
Jolt.
The head crack sparks.
Jolt.
The lightning sizzles.
Jolt.
Another spasm wracks the October Boy’s body.
Ricks manages to get his eyes open. Pretty quickly he wishes he hadn’t, because his reflection’s waiting there on the windshield. Blood’s dripping from a gash in his forehead, and his left cheek’s carved like someone got his holidays mixed up and mistook Ricks’s face for a Thanksgiving turkey. But it’s that leaky forehead that bothers Jerry the most. Blood’s spilling over his brow, splattering his eyelids. Hell, he feels like someone doused his eyeballs with a handful of salt.
The cop wipes blood and sweat out of his eyes—he’s sweating like a goddamn mule. He blinks a few times. Things come a little clearer. The streetlamp’s nowhere in view—he must have missed that—but he spots that brick wall easy enough. He didn’t make out so hot with that. Spun the Dodge sideways, caved in the left side of the front end coming up against it, and the rest of the driver’s side ended up kissing those bricks pretty good. He could stick his tongue out the window and lick the damn things if he wanted to. No way he’s getting out the driver’s side of the patrol car now. Even with the side window broken, he doesn’t have the room to crawl out.
Not that he could, the way he’s feeling. Cut up, cracked up, his body hammered straight through. As for his face, must be that the glass sliced him up when the side window broke. Could even be that his head did the job on the window.
Things start to swim as he tries to remember. It’s weird. He’s trying to recall the accident, when he knows he should be thinking of something else…something that’s important…
Ricks blinks again. Kicks his own ass out of dreamland.
Yeah. There’s the world. The one he needs to grab hold of. It’s clear…and sharp—
“Are you all right?” the kid says.
Jesus. Ricks forgot the kid was there. Apart from his busted-up nose—which the kid had before the accident—he looks all right. He’s even got Ricks’s pistol in his hand and—
The October Boy, Ricks thinks. Sure. That’s the important thing he couldn’t quite remember. Where’s the goddamn Boy?
He looks to the road. The Chrysler never made that turn onto Main. It’s upside down, bashed in, finished. Ricks reaches across the kid, gets the glove compartment open. It feels like his head is going to roll off his shoulders when he does that. As he grabs a box of cartridges, he’s praying that the Boy isn’t as finished as that fucking Chrysler looks. Because if the Boy’s done, and if Ricks’s Dodge did the job instead of one of the kid’s bullets, then it’s all over.
For everything that’s penned up in the city limits, anyway.
Finished. Done. End of story.
But maybe it isn’t that way. Maybe the Boy’s still sucking wind. If that’s the deal, then the town—and everyone in it—still stands a chance.
Ricks glances at his watch. It’s 11:45. Still plenty of time to get the job done. He spills bullets into his hand. They’re out of focus. Blood drips on them from the wounds in his head. For a second it looks like he’s got a handful of fresh-spawned trout taking a bath in his blood.
Whoa, boy. Don’t go swimming in those waters.
Ricks closes his eyes, shakes his head. He doesn’t have time for this addle-brained shit. When he opens his eyes, the fish are gone. The bullets are back. He hands them to the kid, but the moron just sits there, staring at them.
Ricks doesn’t bother to look at him. Instead he sits there for a long moment, waiting for the sound of the opening door, hoping the kid will get a clue on his own.
Things get kind of shadowy for a while. Maybe ten seconds. Maybe fifteen.
“If you want to finish this job,” Ricks says, “you’d better get your ass moving.”
Ricks turns to the kid, just to make sure he got the message.
But the car door is open.
The kid is already gone.
Riley Blake swallows hard.
Man oh man. He never thought he’d win the Run.
He walks down Main Street, the cop’s pistol gripped tightly in his hand. Behind him, to the north, the three fires crawling through the poor side of town have become one roaring inferno. But fire isn’t Riley’s problem. He can’t think about it now. There’s only one thing on his mind, and it’s over there inside Mitch Crenshaw’s bashed Chrysler.
Riley hopes that thing isn’t dead.
It better not be dead.
Because Riley Blake’s got dibs on its homegrown ass. Uh-huh. It’s ten minutes to midnight, and the October Boy is all his. There’s no one else around. No competition…and that means no sweat. Twenty steps…maybe twenty-five…and Riley will be right there at that Chrysler.
He keeps walking, loading bullets into Ricks’s .38 as he goes. He feeds the pistol six, then slaps the cylinder closed. He tries to tell himself that the hacked-up bastard back there in the prowl car wouldn’t give this job a second thought, but he knows he’s nothing like Jerry Ricks.
And he doesn’t have to be. Ten minutes is plenty of time to do the job and still be careful about it. And that’s probably a very good idea, because Riley knows all about the thing over there in that wreck. Call it the October Boy…or Ol’ Hacksaw Face…or Sawtooth Jack…it’s a thing that goes by a dozen other names, a monster that can conjure a year’s worth of nightmares in a heartbeat.
That’s why Riley takes it slow…
That’s why Riley takes it easy…
Ten feet away from the wreck, he kneels and peeks inside the cab. Something’s moving in there, bucking against the hood of the car like some sadist wired it to the Chrysler’s battery. The sight rattles Riley just a little bit, but he steadies his nerve, tells himself that moving is good. Moving means the thing is still alive.
Riley raises the pistol and takes aim. Just as he begins to think this is going to be really easy, the thing in the Chrysler rolls over…
…and drops on its elbows…
…and starts crawling.
Not fast, but not at all slow, either. As it moves, one of its hands flexes open. Something feeds through the vines of its left wrist, extending into the thing’s grasp like a mutant cat’s claw. It’s a butcher knife, and it gleams in the firelight spilling over Riley’s shoulder, and the October Boy’s fingers close around it as he raises his carved-up head and stares straight at the boy with the gun.
Jolts of wild lightning jag through the thing’s head. It’s like watching an electrical storm. Something about it mesmerizes Riley…something about the way the light spills through those triangular eyes. He can’t seem to look away from it; he can’t seem to think. And all the while the pumpkin-headed thing keeps staring at him as it crawls through the busted window, elbowing across the blacktop with that knife in its hand.
And now Riley can smell the monster. Scorched cinnamon, and gunpowder, and melted wax—the stink is all mixed up in the October Boy’s fireball of a head, and that head looks like the devil’s own stewpot on the boil.
The stink shakes Riley out of his reverie.
He raises the pistol…cocks the hammer…
And something smashes against his arm. Hard. Riley drops the .38. He stumbles, grabbing his right biceps as he manages to turn around…
And there’s the girl. That same damn girl. That redhead—
“Miss me?” she asks.
Then she hits him again.
The brakeman’s club cracks against Riley’s skull.
The next thing he sees is pavement coming up fast.
Pete hauls the October Boy away from the wreck. He’s actually glad the Chrysler flipped on its lid. He and Kelly barely dodged it while crossing Main after leaving the movie theater, and that was the third time tonight he was lined up in front of that rolling monster’s headlights. He’s beginning to think the heap has it in for him. And maybe that isn’t a bad idea—because even now the Chrysler isn’t completely dead. Its Gorgon headlights are still blazing, and Pete doesn’t want to get caught in their glow even if the heap’s wheels are pointed skyward.
Pete drags the Boy to the sidewalk. The butcher knife slips out of the Boy’s grasp and clatters against the roadway, but the Boy doesn’t even notice. It seems like the thing that used to be Jim Shepard doesn’t even know what’s going on. He makes no resistance as Pete settles him against a mailbox at the curb.
While Pete’s doing that, Kelly stares down at Riley Blake, the club cocked and ready if he so much as moves.
He doesn’t. He’s out cold.
Pete stops for a second, catching his breath. Then he walks toward Riley, shooting Kelly a glance. “You lowered the boom on this guy twice tonight,” he says, grabbing the football player’s boots and dragging him away from the wrecked car. “I think maybe you enjoyed it a little too much.”
“Damn right I did. And I won’t lie about it, either.”
“Fair enough. You did that job. Now let’s do another.”
“What are you talking about?”
Pete drops Riley Blake’s feet in the gutter and nods in the Boy’s direction. “I mean, I don’t think our friend here’s going to make it anywhere on his own.”
“Whatever plan you’ve got, I hope it’s not complicated…we have about five minutes between now and midnight.”
“We’ll keep it simple, then.”
Pete bends low, ducks his head under the Boy’s right arm, sets him on his feet.
“Okay,” Pete says. “Let’s get him to the church on time.”
Ricks can’t believe he hasn’t heard a shot yet, and that can only mean one of two things—either the Boy was creamed in the accident, or the dipshit he sent to pull the trigger is dragging ass.
