Hellfire (30 page)

She laughed. Ozzie stood tall and sang as loudly as she could, “Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed!”

Soldiers pressed the hunchbacks with their blades. The monsters seemed wounded, but their powerful bodies refused to give up.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come,” Ozzie sang. She knew what the words meant now; she felt them to her very core. “Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

Other voices were joining in now. One of the soldiers seemed to know the song, and more were calling up from the crowd below. Monsters in spots began to writhe and retreat back toward the fire.

“The Lord has promised good to me. His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures.”

Other monsters charged forward, tearing through the voiceless and causing singers to falter. Their twisted bodies ripped through the iron-coated walls of the bullwagons and flung the bodies of soldiers unable to flee.

“Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, I shall profess,” she sang so loudly that her chest hurt, “within the veil, a life of joy and peace.”

This was a battle of faith, and Ozzie didn’t know how long she could hold onto the tune.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Clancy Blake stared into the fires of hell. He knew there was a great deal going on around him, sounds of screaming, fighting... and even singing? He ignored it all. The world beyond the flames kept his whole attention.

When he saw the explosion on the levee, it had been a mistake. He shouldn’t have been looking back at the fire pit they had dug at all, but he could not help checking to see that the fire hadn’t just gone out again. Then the catalyst took, and he saw horrors in the flash.

Seeing the monsters in the trees had evaporated all he understood of the world. The things in this fire went beyond the material; peering into hell was too much. There he saw living embodiments of greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, wrath, envy, and pride. Horrible monstrosities swarmed, preening themselves of bleeding scabs, attacking one another to bite off pieces, stealing those pieces, and cavorting in a tangled busyness that seemed to last an eternity even in the single flash. Worst of all, he thought he had seen people among the monsters doing just the same.

It had struck him to the core. Evil seemed simply too powerful to overcome. He wanted to look away to protect himself. That selfishness somehow magnified his every flaw. He felt naked. Simply doing the right thing wasn’t good enough. He was painting a mural on a crumbling wall. There was no way he could ever hope to escape evil.

Soldiers had come (or was it the police?) and dragged him away in a wooden box. Voices spoke, and people walked in front of his staring eyes, but he didn’t wake up again until the fire came back. It was different now, a little hazier, with shows of evil slipping in and out.

Suddenly Nate Kemp had walked into it. He had tried to call out to the young man, to warn him, but it stuck in his throat. Voices told him it was yet another in his lifetime of failures. Even the little good he had done was nothing compared to the great overwhelming tide of wickedness all around him.

Burr went into the fire as well. It took him and destroyed the machine that had kept him alive so much longer than he should have. Pride and greed.

Yet Kemp wasn’t hurt. He stood among the flames, and the things in it seemed to be afraid. Someone was there with him. Blake couldn’t see who it was, but somehow he knew.

All of Blake’s fears of evil melted away. Mortal strength was nothing, but just as there was evil beyond, there was good.

Kemp pulled off his coveralls to dump out the catalyst that had spilled inside. There was another flash of light, and the fires winked out under a huge and growing cloud. Rather than a deafening crash, it was the sound of a rushing wind that ended in a whisper.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Nate Kemp fell to his hands and knees. The stone was smooth and warm against his bare skin. It was embarrassing to be sitting out in public in his underwear, but that didn’t matter. He had done his work. He had been willing to give up his life, and it had been given back to him as a gift.

He had been on that train for a reason. Everything happened for a reason. Ways were mysterious, but they made the world work.

Nate took a deep breath of air. He didn’t know how long he had been gone, but his body ached as if he hadn’t breathed in minutes. The air was warm and smoky, stinking of hellions.

Nate stood. Burr was gone. The politicians had disappeared along with many of the soldiers while a faithful few stayed fighting the hunchbacks. They were singing, led by Ozzie Jacey, who held her hands to her mouth calling out with every ounce of volume she could muster. Her voice was beautiful.

His shackles were gone. He didn’t remember losing them, but he imagined the flames ate them away. The rest of him was protected by something he couldn’t begin to understand.

Nate turned to look over the balcony’s edge. The mall was still crowded, even though people on the edges had fled. The militia fought with all its might to keep the monsters from tearing more deeply into the huddled civilians unable to escape.

Nate pursed his lips. There was still work to be done.

Sheriff Blake stood up from beside Husk, who was unconscious, his limp hands still holding the gunshot wound to the leg. Blake gasped out words as if they were the first he’d spoken in months. “Are you all right?”

Nate nodded. “I’m fine.”

He glanced back at Ozzie, who was watching him with wide bright eyes. She continued singing, pouring out her soul.

Nate mouthed, “Thank you.”

A joyful tear slipped down the side of her nose, and she turned back to the song.

Nate strode forward to the edge of the balcony. Burr’s speaking trumpet lay where the soldiers had dropped it. He kicked it out of the way.

He looked north to the levee, which stood dented from the explosion. Their plan had been a good one, but the task was beyond human hands. Nate fell prostrate. There was so much beyond him; it was arrogance to think anything else.

When he stood again, he raised both hands high. “Let it be washed clean.”

A white light pierced the sickly orange clouds from above. Wherever it touched, the smoke boiled away like steam. It drove down to the edge of the crater that now stood on the levee. Terrible thunder rolled.

The battle ceased. Humans and hellions alike looked up in awe of the might of Heaven. Every eye watched as the light broke up earth and stone. The pieces dropped away, freeing up a new layer that was itself soon swept away by a fierce wind.

At last the light stopped. The water had been held back until it was done, and then it erupted out. The weight of the lake pushed it with enormous pressure out toward the empty factories. Steel and brick shattered under the moving mass of the water. Towers collapsed and buildings fell into themselves. There was no distinguishable sound of breaking; it was all the same rushing din.

The wave broke up as it rolled through the rubble and dove into the streets. Block after block flooded, pushing carts out of the way and causing people to clamber upstairs. It flowed, unstoppable, past the capitol and at last into the mall.

Water washed over the people, buffeting them this way and that. Parents and even strangers grabbed up children and held them overhead as the chest-deep flood swept past. The sparklers and lanterns were extinguished, ending the glow of burnished gold and spreading genuine night.

At last the water crashed into the hellions. While it passed over the people, the monsters gave horrific screams of pain. Their bodies gave way, melting as if they were made from sand. The tide swept them up, dissolving them into nothing and banishing them back to the Abyss.

On the balcony, Nate felt Ozzie take his arm. He held her hand. The water splashed against the bare stone walls of the City Center, rushing backward over the squirming masses that were left of the once nightmarish hordes.

Behind him, Blake gave a triumphant cry. “Yeehoo!”

He scooped up a bayoneted musket from where a fallen soldier had dropped it and charged at the hunchbacks. Soldiers echoed his heroic shout and joined in behind him. Kemp found a weapon of his own, but he stood back with Ozzie.

The monsters had not yet recovered from Ozzie’s song and the severe lashings of the bayonets. Parvis clambered on his oddly long arms to his stubby feet just as Blake stabbed him straight through his enormous mouth. The sheriff leaned into the strike and twisted, driving the hunchback’s small body toward the railing of the balcony. With a final shove, Blake tossed Parvis down into the churning waters.

The little hunchback squealed until he was swallowed by the waves. His body popped up once, already scalded down to twisted bones, and sank again. He was gone.

Soldiers attacked the other monsters, driving them over the edge after Parvis. The snakelike creature attempted to flee, but a soldier caught it barehanded by one of the slithering tail-legs. He pulled, cracking the snake’s sinister body like a whip. It fell wobbling into the water.

The fat hunchback with the scorpion’s tail tried to fight, driving his stinger clear through the arm of one of the soldiers. A wave of blood and black venom poured out of his green uniform. He cried out, and his fellow soldiers dashed to his side. One blade after the other drove into the monster’s belly, spilling gray ooze that was too thick to be blood. They shouted and pushed, finally toppling it, too, over the edge.

Soldiers pressed Biggs despite him knocking one after the other away with his gigantic arms. They kept after him until he threw out his wings with a loud roar. The force knocked over Blake despite the sheriff charging full tilt. The monster ran over the balcony and leaped into the air. His wings caught the wind, and he sailed out over the water. His black, matted fur blended with the shadows until he disappeared into the night. Someone shot at him, but Nate didn’t see whether the bullet landed.

There were other monsters that managed to escape. Ones with wings already airborne, followed after Biggs or darted off in their own directions. The darkness swallowed them up.

Blake held the musket over his head and shouted a breathy cry of victory. Soldiers circled him and called down to the militia, who sloshed through the water and pulled down the few monsters left wailing as they clung to the walls.

Nate let out a long sigh, emptying out all the tense energy he had kept up in his body. There was still much work to be done, but, for now, it was over. Ozzie took him by the shoulder and leaned heavily. He took her by the waist to hold her.

People on the mall were picking themselves up, hugging one another. It was strangely quiet as everyone spoke in whispered tones. Most sat in the water, welcoming it as a change from the constant smoke that filled their lives. The waters receded, gradually working their way through more streets toward the docks on the river. Fires were doused, and the trademark orange-gray smoke dissipated slowly. A few stars shone in the sky. Lake Providence would have its first genuine night in all the years Nate Kemp could remember.

“What do we do now?” Ozzie asked, her voice ragged.

Nate shrugged. “We live our lives.”

Chapter Thirty

It was Sunday morning.

Birds sang in the warm sunlight. The breeze in the air was cool, and it smelled sweet, the scent of a world after a purifying rain.

Nate Kemp awoke with a smile. He tried to move his stiff body, and his smile turned into a grimace. He’d spent the night sleeping on the floor.

“Why would,” he mumbled before the events of the past night flooded his mind. He shuddered under their weight.

Doilies rested on thin-legged end tables and over the back of the sofa where the sheriff had slept. He was at the Johnsons’ home, a two-story townhouse two blocks over on Moore Street.

Mr. Johnson had worked alongside Nate’s father shoveling coal until one died and the other moved up the ladder to a desk at the railroad. The Johnsons had always looked out for the Kemps, sending hams on Christmas and getting Nate his first job on the rails. Part of Nate had always hated the Johnsons for their luck, but that part was missing this morning.

Voices trickled out from the kitchen. Nate unwrapped himself from borrowed quilts and pulled on his trousers. He and Blake had changed clothes at his own house after what would come to be known as Hellfire Night.

It seemed so strange to climb the familiar steps over the butcher’s shop. He had gone up and down them since before he could walk and only crawled with his pudgy hands. They had always been the threshold for his life. Outside, he was constantly on guard, working to be the biggest man he could be whether through fighting or earning wages. Inside, he was his mother’s son, no matter how he rebelled. Now he had a peace that transcended both sides of him.

The apartment had been empty. The locks were broken, though nothing was stolen inside. Nate imagined the rail agents had stormed the house after they had stolen the airship and gone on the run.

“Where are they?” Nate had asked.

“They...,” Blake began, but he sighed. “They told me, but I...”

Nate patted him on the shoulder. “It’s been a long night. Think on it a minute.”

They ate bread and cheese and drank bottles of cider. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

“Johnsons!” Blake said suddenly.

Nate looked at him.

“That’s where they went,” the sheriff explained. “The Johnsons’ place on…”

“Moore Street,” Nate finished for him. He stood and stretched. The baggy underclothes he’d been wearing were just about to fall off. “First, I’m going to put on something decent.”

Blake gave up his dirty clothes, too, already worn through two days of smoke and struggle. He had borrowed a suit that belonged to Nate’s father. It was a tight fit with short legs, but it would do him until he could get back to Bastrop. Nate was glad the old clothes had found a use.

He walked Blake over to the Johnsons’ house two blocks over on Moore Street. Once the sheriff saw the place, Blake tipped his hat. “I reckon this is time for your family.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’ve got some unfinished business I need to take care of,” Blake said. “I’ll be back, if you’ll have me.”

“The door’ll always be open.”

Blake hummed and walked out to the street.

Nate knocked at the Johnsons’ door and pulled the rope to ring their bell. No one answered.

“Ma!” Nate called up. “Ann! It’s me, Nathan!”

He heard a window shuffle open, and a set of red curls stuck out. Nate couldn’t make out the face in the shadows with the street lamps out, but he could tell from his heart. “Ann!”

“Is it you?” Ann called back.

“Who else would it be?”

Ann disappeared inside. Footsteps and locks clicked from the other side of the door. It burst open, and his mother leaped out to grab him. She buried her face in his chest and blubbered a whole mess of things.

Nate hugged her tightly. “I’m back.”

She pulled him inside. Ann appeared over her shoulder and leaped onto Nate with her own arms wide. Both women were weeping and singing between sobs. Nate was silent, but warm tears rolled down his cheeks.

When they had calmed down, Mrs. Johnson had gotten them some tea. Mr. Johnson stood near the door with his old hunting rifle, watching the dark streets. The city was quiet now, but Nate could only imagine what they had heard.

“What did you see?” Nate had asked.

Ann had piped up. He listened to her meandering rendition of seeing rail agents storm their house from the street corner, hiding with the Johnsons, and overhearing. Somewhere near the flash of light, he fell asleep. He had awoken briefly when Blake arrived back at the door, but he only stayed awake long enough to lie down. Mrs. Johnson somehow found enough pillows for them all.

Nate stumbled into the kitchen. His mother and Mrs. Johnson were fluttering about the stove, constantly in each other’s way and tapping one another on the shoulder as they danced through breakfast making. The table was crowded with Ann, Mr. Johnson, Sheriff Blake, and a dark-headed little boy munching on a huge slice of toast covered in jam. Nate eyed the boy for a long moment as Mr. Johnson spoke so excitedly that his hands waved.

“He’s the one who served us dinner in the capitol prison,” Blake said from the side of his mouth.

Ann nearly spilled her tea. “Prison!”

“Later, dear, later,” Mrs. Kemp said. She pushed Nate to the table and slipped a plate full of bacon into his hands.

“I was just telling everyone what I’d seen around the city,” Mr. Johnson said, his gray hair flopping around his head. “I went out after dawn, you see.”

“Go on,” Nate said just before chomping on bacon.

“People are just milling around. Nobody’s rushing anywhere, not that there’s anywhere to rush to with the whole city pretty much shut up. Except on the city mall! There are tents going up all over. I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“Revival!” Nate’s mother sang. “We have to go there! It’s the Sabbath after all!”

Nate gasped. “I’ve got to check on Ozzie!”

He had been with her that night, holding her up as she caught her breath after keeping the hellions at bay. After the light, the chaos was over, and people picked up the pieces. Militia medics set up surgery tables with long lines. They’d rushed Tom Husk onto one, just as he woke up enough to say they shouldn’t bother. Ozzie had stayed with him, while Nate and Blake helped move other wounded people as they cried out. They’d lost them in the crowd. Nate supposed she’d gone home, too.

“Who’s Ozzie?” Ann asked, rubbing her mouth with a sleeve.

“She’s the young lady who saved the city,” Blake said over the lip of his cup of coffee. “At least, saved it long enough for your brother here to save it.”

“What does that mean?” Ann demanded.

Nate winked. He leaned back toward the stove. “I should tell you, Ma. You’re right about Newton’s Catalyst. It is of the devil.” His was a long story, and everyone listened with gaping mouths.

The Johnsons lent them their buggy and said the walk would do them good as they went down to the tents on the city mall. Nate was glad to be in a vehicle that didn’t have an engine on it for once. He tapped the reins on the horse’s back to trot faster.

“Easy there, boy,” Blake called from beside him. “There’s no need to hurry!”

Nate grinned. “Fine, fine. We have time.”

They rode quietly through the empty streets. People were on the sidewalks, mostly sitting on stoops and whispering to one another. No one seemed willing to speak outright. Only the splashing puddles made noise with reminders of the night before.

The Jacey mansion was one in the big row of houses along the riverfront north of town. A wide boulevard was lined with huge magnolia trees where the wealthy could ride up and down with the glimmering Burr Bridge towering to the east. It was a far cry from the narrow streets with rusted street signs Nate had grown up in, and the police frowned when he and his pals ambled up to this part of town for a drunken walk.

Now the gardens were all flooded out. The trees were stripped of their early summer flowers, which lay scattered on the mud that bled over the sidewalks. The boulevard was deserted except for an overturned carriage.

The Jacey’s house was large and white with front columns stretching through the roof of a wide veranda. The windows of their ground floor were all open, and rugs hung over the sills. Water stains lined the sides of the house, along with all kinds of debris from broken branches to wadded papers. Not even the mighty Jaceys had escaped the flood.

Tom Husk was sitting in a low chair under the shade of the veranda.

“Tom!” Blake called from the buggy.

The lanky newspaperman sat up and waved, knocking a stack of papers off his lap. He was wrapped in blankets with pillows under his head. He had slept on the porch and still wasn’t up. There was a bottle of whiskey next to a cup of water on the thin table beside him. The stump of what was left of his leg was bound in thick rolls of bandages.

Nate pulled the horse to a stop and set the buggy’s brake. Blake hopped out, and Nate followed after him.

“Good morning!” Blake called.

“Morning,” Husk replied. He waved a hand at a couple of rocking chairs nearby. “Have a seat.”

“Good to see you,” Nate told him as he took a chair. “The Jaceys doing you right?”

“They put me up just fine in a spare room… they have one or two of those,” Husk said. “The old man is up in his room, mumbling to himself. Miss Ozzie’s with him. The rest of womenfolk went downtown with the servants and a wagon load of blankets and preserves. Funny what little things like catastrophes and miracles will do to people.”

Nate snorted a chuckle.

“I’d’ve gone along, too, I think,” Husk said, but he paused to pat his leg high on the thigh. “If I were able.”

“You going to be all right?” Blake asked.

Husk nodded. “I lost it, but I suppose there was no way it would’ve healed right. I’ll be investing in a set of crutches pretty soon, and I’ve already got an eye out for a wheeled chair around the office.”

He pointed at the papers in his lap, many of them already covered with scrawled-out lines. A cup full of pencils rested below his chair. “But it’s just as well if I never run again. I’ve got work to do.”

Blake picked up a sheet. “What’s this?”

“The truth,” Husk replied. “I’ve been writing news reports for years, but I never thought I’d have a story like this. People need to hear it, and they need to hear the whole thing.”

“I imagine it’ll sell quite a few copies after today,” Blake told him.

Husk laughed and shrugged. “I’ve already got it mapped out. The serial should get picked up by the big papers back East. Everybody’s going to want to hear about what happened last night. I’ll need to get back to my office once the trains to Bastrop are running again. I imagine you’re eager to get back, too, and sort out the facts from the rumors.”

Blake nodded. “Yep. Though it won’t be for too long.”

Nate and Husk both looked at him.

“I’ve been sheriff a long time,” Blake told them. “It’s a good job where I’ve done some good, but there’s more I need to do. Carmichael can take over for me easy enough.”

Husk’s jaw dropped. “You can’t just up and leave! What about the town?”

“Bastrop can take care of itself,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “Last night I looked into the fires of Hell, and it shook me up so much that I don’t think I could stay in one place anymore. There’s too much evil out in the world to try to watch one small town. I’ve got to go.”

“Are you sure, sheriff?” Husk asked. “If it’s nerves, you could check in at Oak Grove for a while, get them settled.”

Blake was still shaking his head. “It’s not about settling; it’s about fighting. Seeing all that wriggles in the fire took a lot of out me, just about everything, to the point I was going to give up. But, when I saw that light, something came back. I had to act, and I fought. I fought things worse than all the crimes mankind’s ever done to itself. That’s what I’ve got to do.”

“What do you mean?” Nate asked.

“Not all the hellions were wiped out last night,” Blake said, his voice cold. “Some of them took flight. That big one, and I thought I saw some others. Who better than a lawman to hunt for them?

“Then there’re the rest of the hunchbacks attached to rail agents from Maine to California. If I had to guess, they’re going to be disappearing once word gets around about what they really are. I aim to get them before they have a chance to go too far.”

Nate crossed his arms. “What about that boy of yours?”

Husk flipped his head around so fast Nate thought he’d snap it. “Boy of yours?”

“He brought that boy home to the Johnsons’ place,” Nate explained. “The one who opened the locks in Burr’s prison.”

“Johnsons?” Husk asked. He scribbled on paper.

“Family friends.” Nate looked back at Blake, who scratched his head. “What of him? You can’t just take him home to drop him back off in the streets.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I can’t take him with me, either.”

Husk cleared his throat. “Well, now, let’s see. With my condition, I’m going to need a page, now aren’t I?”