Scarecrow Gods (46 page)

Southbound traffic was supposed to slow to forty miles per hour when they came abreast of the checkpoint, but as often as not on the long boring desert roads accelerators had a tendency to press triple digits. The first car was a Volkswagen painted a strange multicolored patchwork. It swerved out of the way. Both the driver and passenger, long hair dancing in the hot night air, regarded The Ghoul, their eyes placid in the frantic moment. A screeching of rubber brought his attention back to the fleeing automobile just in time to see a Cadillac Seville strike the truck head-on. The crunching of metal jarred the night. He couldn’t help but wince as he watched, first the truck, then the Caddie crumple under the extreme force of their combined impacts.

“Fuck me!” said The Ghoul.

No one could’ve survived the collision. From farther up the highway he heard a deeper squeal as airbrakes and multiple wheels grabbed for purchase. A Greyhound Bus twisted back and forth as the driver frantically struggled to stop it. Finally, it lurched sideways and tumbled onto its side. Glass exploded outwards and sparks shot high into the air as metal ground against road in a high-pitched scream. Gil brought his hands to his ears, his body bracing for the impact, but with a final groan, the Greyhound came to rest within ten feet of the smoking wreckage. A sign across the unbroken back window read,
Leave the Driving to Us.

Jared leapt into his Ford Explorer and sped north, pulling broadside across the southbound lane. His lights flashed red, white and blue warnings that no one would mistake for patriotic.

The Ghoul dropped his hands to his sides. The kid was smart—his quick thinking would save other motorists from doing the same as the Greyhound.

Then he heard the first of the screams. He started running for the bus. As he neared, he saw what remained of the trailer the pick-up had been pulling. Smashed in on its left side, the back doors had been forced open by the internal pressure of immovable objects. Redness oozed from where the door had once been seated. He stepped over a piece of metal and a length of smoking rubber, careful not to step on the severed hand. He noticed the simple gold wedding band and felt loss.

“Hey, I need some help over here,” Frank yelled from the bus.

The Ghoul stared into the abattoir of the trailer and saw a few origami limbs moving within.
I need some help over here too
.

* * *

Somewhere in the Sonoran Desert

The sand scraped his face as he hugged the desert floor. His breath was a raging storm in his ears. Each heartbeat was thunder. Each heave of his chest caused a new bruise to spring forth as his body remembered the crash. His shirt had been torn on a bush with thorns the size of a baby’s fingers. Blood seeped along his left rib cage. His pants were soaked with beer, probably from the three girls in the last row who’d been partying. His foot throbbed from where the fire extinguisher had struck it.

A hundred yards away the night was illuminated by the lights of police and emergency vehicles. There must have been fifty people milling around the scene. To his left and his right, cars were backed up as far as the eye could see. The highway had become a parking lot.

Crouching, Danny picked himself up from the ground and ran another twenty feet before hitting the dirt again. It wouldn’t do for the police to see him now. He was so close he could see the lights of Sierra Vista at the base of a broad dark mountain. Somewhere to the left of the town, his sister waited to be rescued.

Danny picked himself up and took off again. The cacti and desert scrubs were tricky to navigate in the moonlight, but his agile legs, used to the running and dodging through the thick Tennessee woods, had little problem.

But his destination seemed so far away, now. If not for the accident, he’d have already been there. When he hit the sand again, his palm came down on something sharp. Pain lanced up his arm and he fell on his side and rolled over, cupping the hand. Examining the wound in the wan light, he fought back tears.

And mortality caught up with him.

Maxom and Danny had gone over the plan fifty times, the older man making him repeat everything in order until he had it perfectly. Danny knew where he had to go, how he was going to get there and what he was going to do
when
he got there.

But he hadn’t counted on a chicken hawk. Getting the cab to the bus terminal was easy, the twenty-dollar tip making the Pakistani driver blind.

But they had never even
considered
the bus might crash. The memory of the screams and wrenching metal haunted him. The three girls in the back seat had flown past him in a twisting, six-limbed ball of screams. A black woman, an Indian man, two soldiers in uniforms tumbled as the Greyhound twisted and groaned along the asphalt. A dozen more people clung to their seats as Danny did. Some were dislodged by flying debris, others by flying people. Danny shuddered as he remembered one man whose piercing scream was cut-short as he slid out a broken window, the bus rolling over him. When the world had finally stopped shaking all he could think of was to get away, remembering the fireballs of exploding vehicles in movies.

Danny bit down on the tip of yucca stuck into his palm and jerked it free. When his tears dried, he rolled over, favoring his other hand, and prepared to move on. He’d risen to a runner’s stance, when he heard the voices.

“¿Estas seguro que no hay peligro? Puedo ver la policia alla.”

“Sí, estoy seguro, idiota. Estas loco del sol. Estan casi una milla de aquí. Te apuesto que es un accidente.”

The voices came from only a few feet away. Danny didn’t see who was making them and he didn’t want to—the desert wasn’t the type of place to meet nice people.

“O es un recoger. Allí es donde esta el puesto de control.”

The voices sounded closer. Danny could hear brush parting just to his front. He wanted to run, but where would he go? He thought about screaming, but who would hear him? He tried to calm himself by breathing through his teeth. He concentrated—in, out, in, out—willing himself to invisibility.

“¡Callense! Puede haber un enboscada esperandonos.”

“¿Espera, que es eso? ¿Oyeron eso?”

The movement stopped only a few feet from his head. Their voices were low and rough as if the men were used to carving up young boys. Danny prayed for intervention.

“¡Madre de dios! ¡Suena como un monstruo o un diablo!”

The brush parted and three tall forms hurtled past him, disappearing into the night. Soon the noise of their passage was lost in the distance. Only his breathing disturbed the stillness. His arms shook. He didn’t know what had happened, but somehow he’d been saved. All he could understand was the word,
diablo
. He knew that the word meant devil. He wondered what they meant by using it here.

Danny stood but saw nothing except the lights of the accident, now far away. There was no need to run anymore. He was glad. Clouds had begun crossing the moon. Shadows invented shadows.

He’d kept his backpack on while on the bus for fear of falling asleep and waking without it. He was glad for it and reached in for his flashlight. He consulted his hand-drawn map, looking at the mountains and his position. Satisfied, he snapped off the light and put the paper away.

He began to limp in the direction of his sister. After about ten feet the desert shifted. A long black shadow slid sideways and growled. Danny thought of only one thing—
diablo
.

He stood as still as he could and for the second time that evening, began to wish himself invisible. He might as well wish to fly, but it was the only thing he could think of doing. There was no way he was calm enough to enter
The Land
. There, he’d have several options, including invisibility and flight. The image of a monster eating him alive as he journeyed
The Land
oblivious to what was happening to his body shot through his mind.

The shadow moved again. A wink of moonlight revealed teeth and glowering eyes. The devil snuffled and grunted several times. Its spoor reached Danny as the wind shifted, almost making him gag.

It was time to run.

Only he couldn’t. He couldn’t even move.

* * *

Ooltewah, Tennessee

“Shit, Shit, Shit!”

Maxom threw on his prosthetics and hobbled to the front door of his home. He’d spent the last three hours trying to enter
The Land
, but was too wound up to sufficiently calm himself. After his jaunt to Sierra Vista he’d had a visitation from Bernie and as usual his phantom had been less than kind.

Why are you always such a chicken shit?

“I’m not. I’m through with that.”

How come you ran? How come you’re still afraid? Want me to tie you to your bunk again?

Maxom chuckled. “Names don’t bother me no more, Bernie, so you can call me whatever you want.”

It’s not name-calling I’m here for. Your actions brought me back. Your cowardice.

“The crosses.”

Yeah, the crosses. Your fear of the dead God.

“Dead God, hell. I’m that God. You were that God. Damn it! You rose to heaven and I’m still here to be reminded of that time, that pain until the day I die.”

Why don’t you end it then? Why don’t you join me?

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. There have been days where it’s all I can think of.”

See how much of a coward you are?

“I ain’t no fucking coward, Bernie. You want to know who the coward is? It’s you! You died. Let me tell you, it’s a hard thing to live the life I live.”

Poor Maxom.

“Poor Maxom, my ass. Poor Bernie. I think you saw me and tried to imagine how a big Viking stud like yourself could make it in a world where men were no longer envious and women shuddered at your passing. I think you saw the future and were terrified of it. What the VC did to us could never be undone.”

Silence.

“Yeah. Just as I thought. You’ve been hounding me like some asshole-demon and it turns out that
you
were more fucked up than me all this time.”

Bernie remained silent after that. Maxom didn’t know whether he was refusing to answer or was unable to answer, but between the edge created by the visitation, his worry about the kid, and the bath he was taking in the humid Tennessee air, he needed a place to go. Maxom wasn’t due for work for a few hours, but decided it was the perfect place to concentrate. In fact, he needed to remain in
The Land
to watch over the boy, and the maggot tank was one place he could guarantee he’d remain undisturbed.

Maxom drove to Raynock Farms as quick as a full-bodied non-phobic person would drive it. No longer did telephone poles or roadside crosses terrorize him like they had. His pulse quickened if he stared at them for too long, but if he didn’t pay too much attention, he could make his way around.

As he passed by the security guard, Maxom ensured he had the man’s attention before he flipped him off. The guard’s smirk dissolved into a tight line of hate and the man caressed the grip of his pistol.

Within minutes Maxom had changed into the freshly cleaned yellow hazardous waste suit that hung in his locker. He attached himself to the mechanical stirrer, ensured the harness was in place and stared at three thousand gallons of rotting chicken parts. Maggots by the millions danced and slid across the surface. Grub worms fought for domination. A few centipedes
clicked
back and forth searching for something special amidst the smorgasbord of rot.

Many people went to church when they needed to think. Counting on the quiet solitude, they’d pray for guidance, hoping their problems would be solved. The maggot tank of Raynock Farms was Maxom’s church. Nowhere else could he concentrate so well. The quiet, the milling millions of insects, and the sense of being suspended, all created a perfect state of mind. Maxom pressed the start button on the stirrer and began to fly, his body pulled along behind it. Before he lost all sense of himself he wondered if the maggots believed in a god. He wondered if even now they were staring up at him in awe, a great yellow being flying high above them.

* * *

Maxom was becoming more worried by the second. He’d been searching for hours, using one Great Horned Owl then another as the creatures tired. He’d found a family of them ensconced in the top of an ancient maple, so he had a steady stable of replacements from which to draw. The accident scene bothered him fiercely. He could imagine the poor kid’s body crumpled within the twisted metal of the bus. He’d seen enough kids die in Vietnam and had promised himself never again. Now, it seemed, another might be dead and this one was his fault.

Still, there was some hope. Until he actually
saw
the body of the boy, he’d keep trying. He’d waited around the scene of the accident for several hours. Now, tow trucks were removing the vehicles from the road. The ambulances were long gone and the backed-up traffic had begun to move. With no reason to stay, Maxom took to the air, soaring south.