Bloodstained Oz (12 page)

      Gayle wept, the lion’s soft, musky fur
absorbing the grief and moisture of her tears.

      The night was quiet outside the wagon,
the only sound the wind tugging at the flaps that hung across the back. Hank
sat with his legs drawn up, almost beneath his chin. The woman, Elisa, had
taken a risk by lighting several candles, but neither of them had pointed out
the obvious peril involved, both from fire and from whatever horrors the light
might attract.

      Neither of them could abide the thought
of huddling in the darkness for another moment.

      The flickering candlelight gleamed off
of the dozens of crucifixes that had been affixed to the walls and roof of the
wagon. Others hung from chains and strings at the front and back of the wagon
and swayed in the breeze that made its way through the flaps. A pair of them
collided with regularity, making tinny wind chimes.

      Hank stared at Elisa as she picked up a
cross that had fallen to the floor. She clutched it in her hands, offered him
a small, sheepish smile, and then her gaze turned once more to the rear of the
wagon. She was pale and drawn, her eyes a bit wild, as though she expected
another attack at any moment. Hank understood. He felt the same way. His
ears were alert for the slightest sound of anything out on the road.

      “We can’t stay here,” he said, his own
voice startling him as he broke the silence.

      Elisa turned her head slightly and
watched him with birdlike wariness. “Of course we can. We must. My Stefan’s
faith keeps us safe tonight.” She shook the cross at him as though to ward him
off. “I know the stories well enough. My grandmother used to talk about them
all the time. When I was very small, if I woke up during the night, I never
dared to leave my bed until I saw the light of morning. Then it would be safe.

      “In the morning we’ll be safe, and then
we can leave. We’ll run far away and pray there are places where the hell
that’s come to Kansas has yet to spread.”

      A sadness touched Hank’s heart that was
even more powerful than his fear. He shook his head, hating to have to
disagree. The woman was crushingly beautiful, even with the grief and terror
etched in her features. He wished he could protect her, wanted to try. But
though he might be able to keep her alive, he couldn’t protect her from the
anguish that had already twisted her heart, the loss of her husband and child,
and the fear.

      The scars were already there.

      “I’m sorry, Elisa. We can’t wait until
morning. Even with faith, even with whatever protection the crosses give us .
. . we just don’t know. You saw the tin man. The monster was inside, in its
heart, but I’m pretty damn certain he could’ve used the tin man to tear this
wagon apart, faith or not. Point is, we don’t know what else is out there.
Just because the cross was like poison to that thing, and it scared off the
ones that attacked you, the . . . Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but the
monkeys . . . that doesn’t mean it’ll work on all of ‘em. The ones I saw, the
ones with the emerald eyes—“

      He could feel the warmth of the emerald
in his pocket, even as he spoke of the vampires that had slaughtered everyone
at the prison. Would it be better to leave it behind, to forget he’d ever
found it? Could they sense it somehow, use it to follow him? Hank didn’t
know. But he’d been poor enough to starve once, and poor enough to steal many
times, and only a fool could have felt the gnawing of real hunger and be
willing to throw away a jewel like this emerald without a fight.

      “You think they’re different from the
others?” Elisa asked. Her voice was small and soft, like a little girl’s, but
her eyes were hard, now. She had already proven herself a fighter when it came
down to it, so he wasn’t going to be fooled by the timidity she now showed.

      “Could be,” Hank replied. “That’s what
I’m saying. We don’t have any idea what else is out there tonight, what else
the storm brought to Hawley. We can’t just sit here waiting for something to
show up that isn’t afraid of the wrath of God, you see what I’m saying? Evil’s
been around a long time. Could be some of it’s afraid of other gods, or no
gods at all. And if they’ve got someone to be their hands for them—like
that little shit did with the tin man—we’re as good as dead.

      “We’ve got to find horses, darlin’. Get
this wagon hooked up and get on out of here. I can’t just wait to die, and I
won’t let you do it, either.”

      A gust of wind rocked the wagon and the
two of them froze, staring at the darkness beyond the entrance. Hank felt his
pulse hammering at his temples and when the moment had passed he looked down to
find that he had clutched his hands into such tight fists that his fingernails
had cut small red crescents into his palms.

      “Hank,” Elisa said quietly.

      He looked at her. “Yeah?”

      “Are we going to die?”

      For several seconds he only stared at
her. Then he nodded. “Could be.”

      A terrible emptiness filled her eyes.
“What frightens me most is how nice that sounds. To be with Stefan and
Jeremiah again . . . I long for that. But I know that Stefan would give his
own life again and again to save mine, and so I know I must fight to live.”

      She shuddered and gnawed a moment on her
lower lip. Then she reached up and unhooked first one, then a second and third
of the crosses that hung from the roof of the wagon. She looped them around
her neck and reached out for the shotgun they had recovered from the ground
outside—for all the good it would do them.

      “A little more than a mile along the
road, round the corner, there are two farms. If the evil has not yet reached
them, there are horses there.”

      Hank nodded slowly, the reality of the
task before them sinking in. The idea of leaving the supposed safety of the
wagon did not sit well with him at all, but his own logic compelled him.

      “All right. Let’s go. We wait another
minute, and I’ll change my mind. Either way it’s a risk, but I can’t just sit
here and wait to die.”

      Elisa offered him the shotgun but Hank
waved her off. Instead he grabbed a heavy shovel that was among the few tools
the traveling salesman had carried with them. He’d rather have had his scythe
again, but he’d lost that. He also found a small hatchet Stefan and Elisa had
used for chopping firewood, and this he hooked through his belt.

      Finally, he followed Elisa’s example and
gathered crucifixes from around the wagon—careful not to leave any one
surface inside without protection—and hung them around his neck. In his
pocket went the thick cross he had used to kill the vampire dwarf who had
controlled the tin man. Then they were both ready.

      The night had been sultry and warm but
now as they climbed down onto the hard packed road, weapons in hand, and stared
around at the moonlit plains, the air had turned cold. Hank shivered,
gooseflesh rose on his arms and made him grip the shovel harder, and he cast a
single, longing glance back at the wagon. When he started off, Elisa was not
beside him.

      He turned to find that her own reluctant
final glance would not release her. She stared at the wagon as if it were all
that remained to her of the husband and child she had loved with all of her
heart, as though the wagon itself were all she had left of her soul.

      Hank took her by the elbow and led her
away, but as they trod up the middle of the dusty road in the light of the
moon, she looked even more hollow to him. Nothing but a shell, now.

      Morning would help, he told himself. It
will take a lifetime to heal her wounds, but sunshine was the first step. If
they could just last that long.

      It occurred to him for the first time
how much simpler it would have been for him if her husband had survived, and
Elisa been torn apart by the vampires. A cold thought, but a true one. She
was beautiful and vulnerable and he was the kind of man for whom kind, pretty
women are a weakness of the heart.

      Hank kept her three steps ahead of him
as they walked and while Elisa kept her eyes on the road ahead, he was alert to
anything moving in the withered fields around them. With the way the land had
dried out and the storms that regularly passed through, he’d heard some men
wonder aloud if maybe they’d all died and gone to hell—a hell slowly
being revealed to them. He didn’t believe that for a moment, but one thing was
certain, God had turned a blind eye upon Hawley, Kansas these past few years.

      And tonight, more than any other.

      The wind spun into dust devils that
reminded him unsettlingly of miniature tornadoes, and of the storm that had
come through the previous day. But nothing else stirred but the dirt and the
wind that whispered across the empty fields. Three quarters of a mile from the
wagon, the road turned. Even before then, he had seen a sparse handful of
small trees in the distance. There was a farmhouse and a barn with a collapsed
roof, but the fields were so arid—just expanses of barren, abandoned
land—that they did not even pause. Elisa had said there were two farms.

      As soon as Hank could see the dark
silhouettes of the second farm, he and Elisa turned off the road. Out in the
open, they were too visible, but at least there was room to fight if it came to
that. Now, though, it was about speed. Half a dozen steps onto the dusty
fields of that farm, and he began to jog. Elisa understood instinctively and
followed suit. The shotgun jostled in her hands as she hurried across the rutted,
blasted landscape, but he could see she was careful not to lose her footing.

      His chest began to burn and he knew he
needed to stop to catch his breath, but Hank kept going. The house and barn
were dark, but all that mattered was the horses. If the animals were dead, he
and Elisa would hurry back to the wagon. The other barn was half-collapsed,
any animals inside either long since fled or been crushed. Oh, it might be
worth a look, but otherwise, they had nowhere else to go except back to the wagon.

      He felt like a fool. What were the odds
that these things, these hunters, had left anything alive tonight? He told
himself that it was possible, but only if the vampires hadn’t reached the farm
yet.

      In his whole life, he’d never been that
lucky. But maybe tonight was the night.

      Elisa paused at the edge of a small,
pitiful corn field. Hank ran right past her. There was no pausing anymore.
They would live or they would die. They were committed to their choice,
whatever the outcome. Breath a ragged gasp, he ran between the rows, trying to
make as little noise as possible. He might die tonight, but he didn’t feel
like helping the monsters track him down. He could hear Elisa following him,
her footfalls soft behind.

      Something crunched like glass beneath
his boot.

      Hank staggered, nearly fell, but caught
himself and came back to see what he had stepped on. Elisa had already reached
the spot, and he found her staring down at the shattered remains of a porcelain
doll.

      “There are others,” she whispered,
pointing at several of the things scattered on the ground all around, amongst
the cornstalks.

      Something about the expressions painted
on the faces of the dolls made his skin crawl.

      “Keep moving,” Hank told her.

      A dark shape darted across the sky just
at the edge of his vision. He turned to see it speed toward the barn, whose
roof was visible even from the midst of the meager corn field.

      For just a moment he was tempted to turn
back. Then Elisa touched his shoulder with a gentle hand.

      “We have to hurry,” she said.

      He nodded, and they started off again
together, taking even great care to be quiet this time. Moments later they
reached the edge of the corn crop and Hank crouched within the stalks, taking
what cover he could. Elisa knelt beside him, stroking one of the many
crucifixes around her neck with her left hand, and clutching the shotgun in her
right.

      Small, hideous figures capered in the
air around the barn, a dozen things with wings and tails that swarmed like
bees, alighting on the roof and tearing at its shingles, then taking flight
again. Impossibly, he saw that Elisa was right. They were some kind of winged
monkeys. The idea had seemed ridiculous, but the moment he saw them he
realized there was no amusement to be had in their absurdity. They were
vicious animals, twisted, evil things that only had the appearance of ordinary
creatures. Vampires. Some kind of bizarre breed now poisoned by cruel
darkness.

      The barn doors were shut and somehow
they must have been barred from within, for several of the monkeys began to
screech and throw themselves against the door in a fury. Their voices were a
mad chittering that made Hank want to claw at his ears. One of the monkeys
hurled itself against the barn door with such rage and abandon that the wood
splintered, but it left a smear of dark blood behind. They would destroy
themselves to get into that barn.