Steps (21 page)

Chapter 38

The Devil’s Walking Stick   
(Gentry)

T
here had been several of them following along on the shore. They threw rocks and braved entry into the water. One of them fell, thrashed and drowned. Two of them were stoned to death by their own. They were a ragtag team, not a Dirty from Mayberry like the others, but normal townsfolk, citizens, a man in cargo shorts and an Arkansas Razorbacks T-shirt, a woman in a camisole and nothing more, two boys who appeared to be brothers, one in a flat-brimmed cowboy hat. They threw rocks and screeched with a familiar rage, because it was the rage Gentry had felt not long before.

Gentry cinched Shelly Lynn higher onto his hip as they waded ever deeper into the lake, drawing those from the shore to them as if tethered by an unseen cable, his hands over Shelly Lynn’s head because one of the boys showed a tremendous arm, that of a quarterback or pitcher. Had the rocks been thrown by a more sober-minded body, they might have been deadly.

The rain fell in torrential sheets as if the ocean had let forth its gates. It splashed into the lake in a steady thrum. Lightning cut into the trees and thunder rolled out of the hills with such force Gentry ducked when he heard it. Those on the shore clamored against the rain, hands up to the sky running madly like men of faith in a backwoods church. A man fell to the ground and clutched his throat. A woman stepped over him, fell, gained her feet for a moment, but then she folded, too, and lay kicking with her mouth open. Gentry was sure he would have heard her scream if the rain were not drowning her cries.

The two boys disappeared in the rain, but in this downpour, they had as much chance of surviving as a muddy footprint. Gentry touched his throat, rubbed it, recalled the spasms that took hold when he swallowed. Billings must have thought the same, because he looked at Gentry as if in silent communication of this fact. They would have drowned in this rain, choked on their own spasming, clenching muscles.

“Is she okay?” Moore hollered over the rain, and she pressed next to Gentry and touched Shelly Lynn on the head.

“I guess so. Him?” Gentry pointed at Perry, who lagged behind them with Billings as inseparable as two eyes on a face. He had dropped his stick, and seemed to clutch for it periodically, as if expecting it would reappear if he willed it hard enough.

“Yeah. Let me see.” Moore touched Perry’s cheek and drew it down, inspected him as the rainwater cascaded over his eyes and washed them. She waved her hand at the group. “All of you are red.”

Shelly Lynn clung to him and showed none of the water-fear of the other infected. He held her away from him where he could see her face, dark in the rain, a flash, soaked, her hair matted to her face as if drawn there in thick blonde streaks, eyes blackened red as if from a beautifully grotesque anime. “Hey, Baby Bird,” Gentry said. “You want to go to Moore?”

Shelly Lynn agreed, stuck out her tongue, licked at the rain, swallowed. He handed her to Moore as they waded ashore. “Should we double back for supplies?” Gentry said.

Billings stuck out his lower lip, silence, pondering, and then said, “No. We keep moving.”

“Where to?”

Billings glanced around as if stating the obvious in silence. “We need to get out of this lake, bro. Water’s gone up probably three, four inches in the past hour, and this rain ain’t letting up anytime soon. We need to find the high ground before we get washed out.”

The wind picked up as they reached shore, and there was a rumbling as they herded Moore and Perry ahead of them. Both of them peered over the lake with their arms up, shielding their faces against the ever-growing force of the wind. With a flash of lightning, Gentry saw the black funnel of a waterspout form over the lake. It was ill-shaped, and reminded Gentry more of a hurricane than a tornado, no definable edges but a flurry of water-spray, wind and chaos that marched over the lake in a direction he could not judge in the single flash.

It roared above all the chatter of the rain, and the rain fell sideways as they ran to the shelter of the shore and huddled next to the embankment. Gentry shielded Moore and Shelly Lynn from the darts of water that stung with the force of a pellet. Something solid struck Gentry, a limb perhaps, because it felt wooden. It scraped along his back like a whip and disappeared, and now small rocks plinked into him like birdshot. He hugged Moore and Shelly Lynn, and with a free hand gripped a sapling devil’s walking stick. He held their weight against the tug of the wind, all of them screaming and the tree biting into the flesh of his palm because it was a devil’s walking stick with sharp thorns along its length. Gentry’s feet lifted off the ground, and Moore cut off his air she squeezed so hard. He held to her and the girl with an abandon of caution, willing to break their ribs and his shoulders if only he could hold tight. The air around him swirled brown, full of water, and he closed his eyes and gripped the tree tighter, thankful for the thorns biting into the bones of his palm, stapling him to the earth with jagged teeth. He felt no pain, only Shelly Lynn and Moore and the wind.

The roar rang like one long gunshot, popping his eardrums as the pressure changed rapidly, and he felt one ear burst because the air flowed through his ear and into the canals leading into this nose and mouth, down his throat. The world fell silent on that side. There was no up or down as disorientation gripped him. He held to the tree with such force that he felt his shoulder slip free of the socket, felt the sinew tear, heard the rip as the muscle was pulled away from the bone. In the other arm were his girls, still there even though he could not see them, and there was a tug, a yank at his feet as if in one final act of desperation the storm tried to claim them. Then a sudden change in force spun him around the tree, wrenched free his grip, slammed him into the bank and sent him tumbling up its slope against the force of gravity. He rolled over Shelly Lynn holding to Moore with both arms, protecting her when the rocks slammed into their heads and jagged sticks stabbed into their backs. He had not breathed for quite some time. The breath had been torn away with so much matter from the ground, and the only sound he heard was the whistle through his ruined ear as the pressure dropped and the wind chased the tornado farther up the shore.

The rain pressed on after it was over, undeterred by the violence of the waterspout. The grip let go of him, and he tumbled down the slope with his hands wrapped around Moore’s head, holding her tight with his chin pressed into her head and his legs pulled around her, all of him like a womb, and her the child.

Gentry’s head slammed into something hard, and there was blackness. His one good ear rang, and the rain showed no mercy but beat on with an oppressive force that rose the water in the lake up the shore to where he lay. He opened his eyes to darkness, felt around and touched Moore, sat up, found her sitting next to him holding Shelly Lynn, and said to her, “Are you okay?”

“Scraped and cut. Nothing broke, I think. Your arm.”

“Hush.” Gentry glanced at his arm, a bloody, vestigial thing with a bone stuck out of the skin of his forearm, the inside bone, the ulna if he recalled correctly. Moore confirmed the bone’s name, and he stood, knowing he was in shock because he felt no pain. He pulled the arm to his chest and cinched his t-shirt up around it in a makeshift sling. He searched around until he saw two others down the shore.

“Billings!” He screamed. “Perry!”

One of them stood and helped the other to his feet, or foot since one leg was missing. Billings leaned on Perry and hop-walked beside him until they were close. Billings muttered one long sentence. “Bro, we got to find my leg there ain’t no more like it in the whole wide world we got to find it.”

“It’s okay,” Gentry said.

“It ain’t okay. It’s my leg, bro. It’s gone. Holy shit, it’s gone. Fuck, man, help me find my leg. I just bought them boots. At least get my boot.”

“It’s okay,” Gentry said.

“Shit it’s gone. It’s my leg, bro. Where’s Jessica? Shit, where’s my rifle. Cover!” Billings wrenched away from Perry, fell, tucked his head as thunder rolled over them, pushed himself up on his elbows and screamed, “Jessica! Jessica!”

Gentry knelt beside Billings and put his good arm around the man. He shook. He rolled to his back and grasped at the stump of his leg as if realizing for the first time it was missing. “Head down, Maggot,” he said. “Where’s it coming from? Get my rifle. Where’s Jessica? Where the fuck is she? Jessica!”

Gentry said to Moore. “Take Shelly Lynn up the embankment. Stay close and we’ll be up in a minute.”

“You’ll never find it,” Moore said.

“I know. Just go up the shore and wait, okay?”

Chapter 39

I am with you   
(Shelly Lynn)

I
am with you
. That was what Him Potty Man said to Shelly Lynn as the wind ripped at her. The tornado passed through Him, and the rain passed through Him, and she wrinkled her nose as He stood on the shore beside Gentry as if in mockery of the man He had destroyed.

“Go ’way,” she said. He did not listen now, nor would He ever. He was a force of nature, and she might as well ask the sky to stop pouring down on her. Moore lifted her and carried her up the shore, crawling with her monkey-clinging to Moore’s chest while Moore clawed into the muddy bank and hauled them up one hand-pull at a time. They topped the bank, and Moore stepped away from it a safe distance because the water poured over the edge, down the slope and washed it away in fist-sized chunks. It was like watching chocolate melt.

The wind ripped through the trees in the distance, and there was that familiar rumbling sound in the distance. Shelly Lynn’s head angled that way, and both of them watched as the night lit up and silhouetted what appeared to be a giant stone god, upright and towering above the trees, stomping through the forest swinging his arms with his head downturned. The treetops bowed, bent, broke beneath his feet. The lightning died, and he blended one with the night, a pause, and then the clap of thunder that might have been one of his footsteps echoing through the sky.

Shelly Lynn buried her head in Moore’s shoulder and closed her eyes. There was movement, and the rain let up a little. Shelly Lynn lifted her head. Moore had found some small shelter huddled against the face of a boulder, and they waited as the men searched the lake for Billings’ missing limb.

Her brother appeared first, followed by Gentry, with Billings in the rear, and when they reached them and crouched beside her, Moore said, “I’ll be damned.”

“Found it stuck in the mud knee-deep just a few feet away,” Gentry said. “Right where he left it.”

“Socket is a little busted,” Billings said. He nodded as if that was all right and added, “But I can fix that, no problem-oh.” He put a hand on Perry’s shoulder. “And if that don’t work, I got me a human crutch. Right, Maggot?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Now come on,” Billings said. “This ground ain’t high enough, not in this rain.”

“You all right?” Moore said.

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” Billings said.

“Just asking.”

“Let me do my own worrying. You got enough dealing with this crippled half-wit here.” He thumbed at Gentry’s arm.

Moore stood and hugged Shelly Lynn to her shoulder. Shelly Lynn watched behind them as Him Potty Man lit a path around the sheltering boulder and into the forest, away from where the stone giant stomped the trees. Billings took the lead, and when he began walking away from the path along the shore, Shelly Lynn tapped Moore’s shoulder and pointed.

“What, baby?”

“Mmm,” she said.

“What?”

“Mmm!”

Moore called the others to stop, and they huddled around her and stared as Moore egged her to go on. “What do you see, Baby Bird?”

Shelly Lynn pointed down Him Potty Man’s lit path. “I see that way.” She waved off the direction they had been heading. “That not way.”

She put her head into Moore’s shoulder and closed her eyes because she did not want to see them laugh at her. None of them laughed, and there was a finger under her chin pulling her head away from Moore’s shoulder. When she opened her eyes, Shelly Lynn saw Billings with his nose almost touching hers. “How ’bout you lead, Baby Bird.”

He did not laugh after he said it, and his face was serious like the people on tv, the ones who talk about the weather and the news, matter-of-fact and no doubt and no laugh-laughing. He pointed and said, “That-a-way?”

“Mmm hmm,” Shelly Lynn said.

“All right, you heard her boys and girls. Moore, you take point with Baby Bird and keep us on-track.”

For another long moment they all stared at her, until Billings stood in the middle of them with the storm booming around him, a one-legged, burnt-faced, battle-scarred god risen from the ground and mud. “Look. I done been to hell and back on more than one occasion. If ever a man’s seen God at work, I have. I don’t get it—” he whacked his artificial leg “—but I
get
it, if you get me. You get me?” He pressed his fingers under each eye, pointing up at them, black and blood-filled and leaning close for the others to see in the darkness. “I can see. I can’t
see
, but I can see, you get me?” He put his hand on Shelly Lynn’s head and held it there a moment. “This little girl, she’s God at work or I’m, well, I’ll be a . . .”

He trailed off, then, apparently losing his thought to the thunderstorm, to a burst of lighting, grasping for the right words, and when he found none he simply pressed his lips to Shelly Lynn’s forehead. Then he put his forehead against hers and stared at her, and she could feel his breath. Billings said, “I will follow you, Baby Bird, so long as I live. Can you show us the way? Can you get us home?”

Shelly Lynn shrugged. “All I know is that way.” She pointed along Him Potty Man’s path.

Billings stepped around her and Moore, took a few steps, pointed and said, “That-a-way?”

“Mmm hmm.”

Billings headed in the direction without looking back. Moore rose and followed, with Perry and Gentry behind them.

“Mmm,” she said when Billings veered off the path. She pointed, and Billings put a hand to his chin, pretended to turn right, gaped at her, and then smiled and angled left in the direction she signaled.

It became a game where she controlled the soldier with her finger, while around them the storm raged, the rain fell, and the rock-giants trampled the forest. Trees cracked as loud as thunder, and with each stroke of lightning the sky grew a shade lighter, and soon there came the hazy dawn because they had hiked all night.

Water pooled at their feet. Shelly Lynn pointed. Billings turned, and they all followed him. Ahead through the trees she saw a clearing, and when Billings forged through the last of the underbrush, he stopped and did not move as they caught up with him.

Between them and the road, the ditch raged with runoff water. The water pooled and eddied and ran up the bank into the forest, flooding the trees, but the road was built-up and the water bled into the ditch and rushed away down the hillside. Billings stopped and checked Shelly Lynn for direction, but Him Potty Man no longer lit the path. She stuck out her bottom lip, and Billings stuck out his, and for a moment he only stared at her and waited.

“All right, then,” he said. He waded into the river flooding the ditch, took Gentry’s hand with Perry behind him and Moore carrying her. They chain-waded across the ditch with it sweeping at their feet. Each in the forward and rear positions anchored the others as they swayed against the current, until they all stood on the road.

In the ditch, Shelly saw the broken figure of a human, not a man or a woman or even an adult or child, but simply a bloated and beaten thing with two arms, two legs and a head bobbing and tumbleweed-rolling in the ditchwater at a runner’s pace. It seemed to glance at her with its bloated eyes, and then the head was spirited away by the water as if in burial, a final wave of the arm above the water, and it was gone.