Cruel World(109)

Cool night air drifted in through the broken window. The herd was thirty yards away and closing. He aimed at the center of their numbers and fired.

The flare launched out of the pistol with a sizzle and seared the night in a sodium line as it sped across the distance between the farmhouse and the stilts. It blazed a path between them, their forms careening apart like water breaking on a rock. The croaks became hisses that filled the night like a kingdom of snakes.

Quinn stooped and reloaded the flare gun, shooting the second round at the greatest clot of figures.

Then he ran.

Through the house and out the rear door without looking back. The air whipped past him, his breath quickening. He sprinted into the closest row of the plantation, the sound of his passage metronomic against the many tree trunks. Sticks and grass tried to tangle his feet, but he stormed through them, twigs breaking underfoot. After what seemed like hours, he swung to a stop behind a tree, drawing the revolver.

Held his breath.

His heart wasn’t where it should’ve been. It thudded behind his eyes, in his throat, even his arms. The farmhouse was out of the sight, only the rows and rows of trees visible in the night. A window broke. There were sounds of a door being ripped from its hinges. More croaking. Behind him he could hear soft footfalls in the distance.

He turned and ran again, plummeting through the tunnel of branches and trunks, sight jangling with each step. Ahead, a dim light swung. There and gone like the flash of the nearest lighthouse he’d watched every night at home. The light spoke a word through the blackness.

Hope. Hope. Hope.

He exploded into a clearing and nearly trampled Alice and Ty beneath him before slowing. Denver snarled and took a step toward him before he realized who Quinn was.

“Thank God,” Alice said, latching onto his arm.

“They’re still coming,” Quinn managed between sucking breaths.

Across a narrow tract of turned field, a flashlight swung.

“There’s some kind of house over there,” Alice said, grabbing Ty’s hand. She hurried forward, and Quinn kept pace, his legs weak from the flight.

As they neared the home, which didn’t seem much more than a shack of some kind, its left end much higher than the right, the person holding a flashlight shone the beam on them, and they paused with the sound of a shotgun being racked.

“Hold it right there,” a cigarette soaked voice said. They stopped and stood beside one another. Alice held the AR-15 ready but pointed at the ground. “What’re you doing in my field in the middle of the night?”

“We’re being chased,” Quinn said, throwing a look over his shoulder. The clouds had parted enough for a wedge of cold light to fall on the plantation edge. The trees stood like bristling needles in their rows.

“By what?”

“By stilts,” Alice said, blinking at the glare of the flashlight.

“The hell is that?”

“The creatures. What used to be people,” Alice replied, holding up a hand to block the light. “Can you get that out of our faces?”

“Why shouldn’t I just drop you where you stand right now? How do I know you’re tellin’ the truth?”

A branch snapped in the distance, and a long hiss trailed from the trees.

“Because they’re going to be here in thirty seconds,” Quinn said. “Either let us inside or get out of our way.” He raised the pistol from his side, aiming at the shape behind the light. The man drew the beam across them all, finally resting it on Ty who gripped Denver’s collar in one white hand.

Three stilts exploded out of the plantation and paused, their heads snapping up as if catching a scent before they bellowed and ran toward them.

“Inside!” the man shouted, and fired a blast from his shotgun in the stilt’s direction. They ran past him and found a weather-beaten door in the side of the house. Quinn glanced around as soon as they were all inside.

The house was a simple shed, its roof slanting dramatically to one side so that even Ty wouldn’t have been able to stand up straight beneath its low end. The walls were thin, cracks as wide as his thumb open to the outside in some places. Two candles burned on the top of a great cast iron woodstove in the furthest corner beside an unmade cot. The air smelled the same as the field outside, turned soil and a hint of tobacco. Unfinished boards creaked beneath their feet.

“This won’t keep them out,” Alice said, spinning in the center of the room.

She was right. Quinn’s eyes combed the space for somewhere to hide. He was about to lead them back outside to take their chances in the dark when the man entered and slammed the door shut behind him.