Hellfire (18 page)

“Run!” Husk repeated as he came to the gate of the lumberyard.

The men seemed to come back to life. They took his advice and chased after the horse and wagon toward the main part of town.

Inside, the lumberyard was deserted. The men there before must have been the foreman and a hand talking with a lumberjack. He had been wise enough to spend his day cutting wood rather than join in the monster hunt; he was wise again in heeding Husk’s warning.

The yard was covered by stacks of twelve-foot logs of every kind of tree local to Gloriana and a few that must have been brought downriver. Wooden wedges had been hammered into the bottom of each stack to keep the round trunks in place. A hammer still lay next to a stack of cedar.

Husk felt himself smile with his open mouth as he gasped for air. He ran for the hammer and scooped it up with both hands.

As he turned around, he saw the monster cross into the yard. Its shark-toothed mouth howled as it ran. Smoke trailed from its legs and back where sunlight slipped through the waving branches.

Husk hefted the hammer and swung it at the side of a wedge under a stack of cedar. The two met with a loud thud. The wedge shuffled, and the cedar trunks groaned, but the pile held.

Husk glanced back over his shoulder. The monster was just yards away. There was no time to grab something heavier. He had to do it himself.

“Come on,” Husk said to the hammer. “Once more.”

He lifted the hammer with his weary hands, took a breath, and spun around completely. When the hammer hit the side of the wedge, it popped. Husk dropped the mallet and threw himself past the edge of the falling cedar. The woodpile gave way, trunk after trunk tumbling over one another with increasing thunderous clamor. One hit Husk’s body on his leg hard enough to knock him down.

The ground was packed hard with a thousand footfalls of humans and horses. He rolled over to avoid the pain and saw the monster’s twisted face.

Husk screamed, and then the face was gone, replaced by a tidal wave of ruddy cedar. Clanking wood drowned out the monster’s roar, which turned into a pained squeal as the trunks buried him. After a moment more of clamor, the wood came to a rest. A cloud of dust lingered above.

Even though his lungs burned, Husk kept his mouth clamped shut. He could feel his nostrils flaring. The dust stung his eyes as he looked over the trunks.

Shouts came from behind him.

“What’s going on?”

“What happened?”

“A pile fell!”

“Hey, you!”

Husk turned around slowly. Men in coveralls and leather aprons were running out of the sawmills. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t speak. All he could do was take deep gasps of dusty air. He coughed.

The first millworker arrived and slapped him on the back. “Are you all right?”

Husk shook his head and coughed again.

The second stopped a few feet away. “Anyone under that?”

He looked up and then back at the woodpile. The cedar trunks rested at odd angles on top of one another. One of the monster’s branches poked up with its tip broken.

Husk went back to breathing. A single tree in the woods hadn’t been enough to kill the beast, but it seemed a dozen just might have done it.

A third millworker stepped cautiously onto a trunk with his arms spread for balance. Husk held up a weak hand to try to stop him. The man didn’t notice. He looked at something past his feet.

The millworker took a few steps, leaned over, and drew in a hand to cover his eyes. “I think someone was down there!”

“No,” Husk said between gulps of air.

“What’d he say?”

“No human,” Husk tried to tell them.

The woodpile shifted. The man standing on them lost his balance and yelped as he fell. Smoke poured out from among the trunks.

The workers shouted. Husk heard himself whisper, “Run.”

“What’d you say?” a voice asked.

Husk took in a deep breath and shouted, “Run!”

As if animated by his cry, the monster burst out from under the cedar trunks. It hefted an entire trunk on its shoulders. As it came to its full height, the cedar tumbled to the pile around its feet. Its gaping mouth, now missing several shark-teeth, gave a roar that made Husk’s ears ring.

Men shrieked. Husk pushed himself to his feet and ran again.

Crushing the monster wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt it deep. The boar spear had been metal, so had the bayonets that slashed it. If the logs couldn’t kill it, maybe the blades that cut them would.

Husk dashed toward the sawmill resting at the back of the yard near the river. Black smoke poured out of the stacks above the huge furnaces blotting out the sun in perpetual twilight over the mill.

The front of the mill was open outside of a few wooden columns, allowing men to bring in tree trunks from any direction. Half-cut boards, flat on one side and rounded on the other rested against the brick floor. In the center of the wide room, under a series of hooks on chains that led to pulleys, was the massive main blade. It sang out a low note as it spun so fast Husk couldn’t see the individual teeth. Smaller blades whirled with more highly pitched squeals.

The workers had left the blades turning. A fallen log pile could well have been lethal, and Husk couldn’t blame them for wanting to help. Now they were screaming and running in every direction with the smoking monster taking swings at them with its wounded arms.

If only I could just run away. But I don’t want to live in a world with that thing running around.

He let his boots skid to a stop on the brick. The shade of the mill seemed dark, even compared with the smoky shade outside.

“Over here, you piece of filth!” Husk shouted.

The monster raised its head. It turned toward him, made a snorting snarl, and charged with both arms waving.

Husk bit his lips. He turned back to the mill and ran for the hooks dangling along a track. They allowed just a couple of men to push a trunk weighing more than a ton like it was a few pounds. He hoped it would do the same for a monster. There wouldn’t be any other way to direct it into a spinning blade unless he went in first.

Husk took a chain in his hands. The iron felt cool. He held several links and drew up to the hook in his other hand. The monster wasn’t going to give him more than one chance.

Its roar from just behind woke him from his thoughts. Husk dashed toward the huge saw in the center and climbed onto the wooden guide platform set with cork rollers. His boots still squished out bayou water against the floor of sawdust and brick.

Rafters shook as the monster stomped into the mill. It had to duck its ugly head under the roof.

Husk gave a shout of his own and jumped, throwing himself toward the monster. The chain caught tight just before he hit the floor, and the force swung him around. The monster’s roar stopped as its enormous feet stumbled trying to change direction.

The chain began to swing back. Husk turned around on it, just as he had on the rope at the old swimming hole as a boy. The thrill of those days came back into his heart, and he drove the hook’s tip into the monster’s back. It gave a howl so loud Husk felt something in his right ear pop. Stabbing pain filled his head.

He refused to let it stop him. Husk let go of the hook and fell to the floor. As soon as his boots touched brick, he ran, carrying the end of the chain with both hands.

The chain caught, and the monster gave another roar of pain. It waved its hands, trying to reach the hook in the small of its back.

Husk pulled as hard as his thin arms could. The monster’s huge body gave way, and it fell face-first onto the guide platform.

“Come on!” Husk shouted at himself. He dug his boots between the bricks and kicked his legs, gradually building speed as he drew the chain on. It dragged the monster’s body across the cork rollers toward the spinning blade.

Husk couldn’t hear anything over the whining of the blades, but he did feel the monster shift. He didn’t waste energy looking back and kept pulling. The ringing tone of the blade became lower as it met something to cut. Then the monster scream’s drowned out even that.

Husk kept pulling until the chain loosened again and the blade’s cry became high again. Then he let out a burst of air. His whole body was washed by a wave of joy.

He dropped the chain and took two long, low steps until he slid to the floor. Gasping for air again, Husk turned around.

The monster lay face down on the platform, the hook still stuck in its back. One arm rested behind its back, reaching for the chain. The other dangled over the edge.

Husk squinted in the shadowy mill. He couldn’t see what had been cut. Maybe the blade had gone into the body, but not through.

Taking a couple of breaths to steady himself, Husk stood up. He didn’t let his eyes leave the slumped body of the monster. Slowly, he took in the carnage.

The blade hadn’t cut its body, just its leg, which was completely severed. It lay behind the platform, oozing the same gray matter as its arm had. There was no blood.

Husk swallowed. Perhaps cutting off a leg was enough to end its horrid life. He had to be sure.

Husk took three steps back toward the chain that led to the hook in the monster’s back. Husk’s hand shook as he reached for the chain.

Just as his fingers came around the iron, the monster gave a huffing grunt. Husk dropped the chain and scurried backward until he hit the back wall of the mill.

The monster drew itself up crookedly, balancing on one wounded arm before going onto the next. When it came to a sitting position, it leaned to reach and then wrenched the hook out of its back. Its puffy head fell back, and it gave a loud, pained howl.

Husk covered his ears with his hands. He pressed them tight against his head to keep them from shaking.

The monster coughed and spat out waves of foul stink. It then reached down and picked up its lost leg with a clawed hand. Its other hand gripped its stump. With a stiff grunt, the monster shoved the two together.

Its head rocked back with another roar of pain. Still, it pushed. After a long moment, the monster stopped roaring and looked down. Its toes wriggled.

Husk pressed himself against the wall. His jaw dropped, but it took several tries to speak.

“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be. It’s impossible.”

Yet, it is true.

Husk didn’t want to believe it. The fireman had talked about monsters, and he had seen a monster, so at least there was precedence. Seeing it reattach a limb just couldn’t be true.

Yet, it is true.

A tear rolled down from Husk’s right eye. All his life, he had pursued the truth. Now he wanted no part of it. It was too terrifying, too powerful. He wanted to go back to his life of happy ignorance, even if it was all lies.

The monster lunged from the platform onto the floor. Its feet landed with a pop, and the newly attached leg made cracking noises. It growled and limped toward Husk.

“No,” Husk whispered again, but he had to admit what was happening was true. The monster would kill him, and then what?

He hadn’t ever worried about the afterlife. That was something his grandparents did from their cabin. Husk had memorized Psalms in order to win sweets back then, years ago. Today there were trains and airships. There was too much going on in this world to think about any other.

Yet, it was true. There was deeper truth than he had ever considered. Now he looked death in its ugly face.

Husk took a deep breath and mumbled, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…”

The monster stopped. It made a sucking sound like a gasp.

Husk’s jaw dropped. He stumbled over words he hadn’t used in decades. “He maketh me to lie down in… green pastures. He leadeth me beside… still waters.”

The monster’s face twisted as if pained. It drew up one of its arms and waved it at Husk.

Husk pulled his jaw tight. His cheeks grew warm.

“He restoreth my soul!” he said more loudly. “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake!”

The monster howled.

Husk let a smirk pull the corners of his mouth. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me! Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me!”

Husk stood up as he spoke. His leg hurt where the logs had hit him, but the pain was in the background. All that mattered was he had the upper hand. These words could stop the monster.

But he had to kill it. He had known that in the bayou. It was his duty.

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” Husk said. “Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over.”

But what could kill it? The monster had been shot over and over, crushed by wood, even sliced by steel. Pure sunlight made it smoke, perhaps even burned it, but how could he pin it down for however many hours it would take to burn the monster to death? The only things that had hurt it were an old machete and a boar spear.

Husk’s heart skipped. It was the humble weapons, the ones made special by a man’s hard work. He had known that innately somehow as a child sitting on his granddad’s workbench and seeing the grease and dust over well-used wood and iron. They could do anything. They could kill a monster.