Walk the Sky (15 page)

He went headfirst down the stairs, tumbling like a child at play. Only there was no fun and games to be had here. There was only pain—massive amounts of pain—streaking through his body as bones twisted and snapped. One of his hands sprang out to grab hold of the railing but his fingers just barely grazed the wood. He kept rolling and rolling until, all at once, he stopped.
 

He lay on the floor at the base of the stairs, staring up at the ceiling. Bits of dust sprinkled down on him, having been disrupted from the explosion. He watched it from his place on the floor, all those thousands and thousands of dust particles floating through the moonlight slicing in through the window. They looked like stars, those dust particles, and for an instant Willard believed he was in space, floating among the heavens.
 

A voice spoke from somewhere nearby—

“Reverend?”

—and at once Willard was no longer floating in space but rather lying on the floor of the saloon. The pain he had felt before came on even stronger, pulsating throughout his body. He tried sitting up but his left arm was broken. He tried moving his feet but his left foot was broken. At least he
thought
they were broken—he couldn’t quite see them from where he lay.
 

He heard footsteps on the stairs, coming closer, and tilted his head to watch Bolton navigating the steps. The man did so in a slow nature, with one hand pressed against his head, like he was hurt.
 

“Are you okay?” Bolton asked, stopping on the bottom step, his hand gripping the railing.
 

“Do I look okay?”
 

The Reverend’s voice was deep and guttural. Something sharp pierced his chest with every word.
 

Outside, there was a sudden volley of gunfire. It was coming from down the street. From the jailhouse, most likely.
 

Willard squeezed his eyes tight. He took a slow breath and once again felt that sharp piercing in his chest. He tried another breath, this one much slower, and while he felt the piercing, it wasn’t as bad.
 

Bolton said, “I nearly died up there.”
 

Willard opened his eyes.
 

“You were just going to leave me up there, weren’t you?”
 

Willard said nothing. It wasn’t from lack of having the words, but simply from the fear of how much pain it might cause to voice those words.
 

Outside, there came more gunfire, more explosions. But, most importantly, there also came screams. Ear-splitting, agonizing screams.
 

“They’re here, aren’t they? The demons.”
 

Willard forced himself to nod, despite the pain.
 

Bolton looked around the remains of the saloon, as if inspecting the damage.
 

“What was your plan? When no more drifters came by your town? When the men who were left would have to start dying night after night?”
 

Willard said nothing.
 

“You don’t even know, do you? You convinced the town into sacrificing their own children, said it was God’s will, but you never thought about what would happen when everyone in town died. First the women, then the men, and then ... what? Just how were you going to keep it going?”
 

Still Willard said nothing.
 

Bolton shook his head slowly, offered up a heavy sigh.
 

“Well, Reverend,” he said, stepping over Willard’s broken body, “I thank you for your hospitality, but I best be on my way.”
 

Willard tilted his head just slightly so he could track the man with his eyes. Bolton had only taken six steps before he slowed and stopped and then just stood there. He offered up another heavy sigh, and turned back around.
 

“Well, hell,” he murmured. “I can’t just leave you lying there, now can I?”

*
 
*
 
*

The Reverend was surprised to learn that the pain really wasn’t all that bad. Sure, it was excruciating, almost to the point where it forced Willard to pass out, but the good part was in the minutes he had lain on the floor at the base of the stairs, his entire body had gone numb. Pain kept circulating, but he only felt a specter of it.
 

It took much effort on both of their parts to get the Reverend on his feet again—well, on his foot; his left ankle had indeed been broken during the fall—but once he was up and had his arm around Bolton, they started toward the exit without much trouble.
 

Outside the saloon came more gunfire, as well as another explosion, and there was even more shouting and screaming.
 

Willard braced himself against the pain, his eyes shut. In the darkness he could picture them there in his mind, the demons surrounding his men, eating them alive.
 

Then they stopped and Willard opened his eyes and saw that they had made it to the saloon’s front door. Somehow it hadn’t been destroyed during the explosion. Even the glass hadn’t been cracked. Through it Willard could see them out there, the demons.
 

Based on the nocturnal shuffling he had heard these past several weeks, he had expected them to be slow creatures. But here they were running, nearly sprinting, moving at unnatural speeds as they climbed up the sides of buildings, as they tore his men limb from limb.
 

“Back,” Willard managed to say. “We ... should use ... the back.”
 

“There they are,” Bolton said, pointing with his free hand.
 

Willard squinted, pain flaring up his neck as he tilted his head. He couldn’t make out what Bolton meant at first. All he could see were the demons.
 

Then he saw them, Clay and his friend and ... was that a woman?
 

“Where are they headed?” Bolton asked, as the three disappeared into a building.
 

Willard’s focus shifted back to the street. To the demons sprinting back and forth. To the pieces of his men strewn about the dirt. To all the blood glimmering in the moonlight.
 

“Hey!” Bolton said, jerking him.
 

Willard blinked at the sudden pain, shifted, and muttered, “The livery.”
 

A moment later three horses came racing out of the building, carrying Clay, his friend, and the woman. A few of the demons spotted them, started giving chase.
 

“Let’s go,” Bolton said, reaching for the saloon door handle.
 

“No ... we can’t ... go out there.”
 

Sunbursts of pain exploded with every desperate word.
 

“Not
we
, Reverend.
You
.”
 

Willard tilted his head slightly to look at Bolton.
 

The man was grinning back at him. “I may be a coward, but I am not a stupid man. If I have any chance of leaving this town alive, I’m gonna need some help—and you, Reverend, are that help.”
 

Bolton’s hand gripped the door handle, and immediately Willard understood.
 

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head in small jerks.
 

Bolton opened the door. He said, “May you rot in hell,” and pushed Willard forward, out over the walkway into the street.
 

Willard tried swinging his arms to catch his balance, he even tried to move his feet, but it was no good. He went down face-first into the dirt.
 

The demons nearby sprinting back and forth—many streaked with his men’s blood—immediately stopped and turned in his direction.
 

Their faces had no eyes, but their mouths were large with teeth.
 

Reverend Willard Titus offered up one final prayer—

Dear Lord, please no

—but it was already too late.
 

The demons sprang forward and began to feast.

26.

The creatures had somehow doubled in their individual physical size since Witashnah had last seen them. They were
huge
. And they were fast, too, almost
too
fast, cluttering the main street, swarming onto the plank walkways, scaling the sides of buildings. Luckily, only a portion of them gave chase as she led Clay and George out of town, urging her horse to go faster and faster.
 

Behind her, Clay let out a war cry. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see him kick a creature hard enough to send it away from his horse, head over heels. By the time she turned around again, another creature was grabbing at her saddle.
 

Witashnah drew her gun, put the barrel inches away from the creature’s head, and fired off a shot.
 

The three riders picked up speed as they entered the open desert, using what little ammunition they had left to fend off the manic creatures.
 

She reached for the very last stick of dynamite, held it steady as she gripped the reins and attempted to light the fuse. She was going too fast, and the flame kept winking out, but after several long seconds she managed to keep it lit and got the fuse going and then she twisted in her saddle, just long enough to see the creatures behind them—maybe a hundred—and she flung the stick of dynamite at the head of the swarm.
 

At the last moment Clay swerved his horse and looked up and saw the stick coming at his head. He ducked, and the stick passed over him, and a second later there was a massive explosion, even more massive now that they were out in the open, the ground coughing up dirt and sand and bits and pieces of the creatures.
 

It didn’t stop them all, however. There were still more creatures, but they seemed to be slowed by the explosion, giving up the chase. Witashnah urged her horse forward, as did Clay and George, until they crested the ridge and disappeared onto the other side.

*
 
*
 
*

The sky was clear, the moon bright, and the air chilly by the time they arrived at the cave.
 

There had been no more encounters with Those That Walk The Night.
 

“Why are we stopping here?” George asked.
 

“My grandfather,” Witashnah said.
 

She headed for the tunnel that would lead to the cave, Clay behind her.
 

George stayed where he was.
 

Clay asked, “What’s wrong?”
 

“What’s wrong?
What’s wrong
? I thought you were dead for one thing.”
 

“Well, I’m not.”
 

“I can see you’re not. But what—what happened to you?”
 

Clay exchanged a glance with Witashnah. “What do you mean?”
 

“You’re different.”
 

“George—”
 

“You’re different and I don’t understand what’s going on. Who is this anyway?”
 

He motioned at Witashnah, who lowered her eyes.
 

“I am Witashnah, one of the last of the Tachucua tribe.”
 

“George,” Clay said, patience in his voice, “we’ll explain everything to you as soon as we can. But right now we need to collect Akecheta.”
 

“Who’s Akecheta?”
 

“Follow us and you’ll see.”

*
 
*
 
*

The fire was going strong, creating dancing patterns of light and shadow across the stone ceiling. Akecheta sat on the far side of the fire, staring at the flames as if he could see them even in his blindness.
 

“We must leave,” Witashnah told him in her native tongue.
 

Akecheta grunted and shook his head.
 

She was fully aware of how stubborn he could be. Sometimes it was because he was an old man set in his ways. And sometimes it was because he knew something he had chosen not to share with her.
 

Witashnah repeated her request.
 

Akecheta shook his head again.
 

The patterns of light and shadow suddenly changed direction and danced off toward the far end of the cave.
 

Witashnah felt a chill pass through her body.

“What the hell?” George said from behind her.

She turned and there, standing just inside the cave, was a boy.

27.

Clay had never considered himself a superstitious person. Like many people born in his area of the world, he went to church every Sunday and said his prayers before every meal and before he went to bed, so he believed in God and he believed in the Devil and he knew there was good and evil in the world. And despite everything he had experienced these past two days—first hearing the demons, and then
seeing
them—he knew there was more in the world than he could ever begin to imagine. But ghosts? No, ghosts were something he had never truly believed in.
 

Even now, standing in the cave with George and Witashnah and Akecheta, he didn’t believe what he was seeing was real.
 

The boy—the boy he and George had found only days ago, the boy they had brought into the first town and which had been taken to the second town, the boy who was then sacrificed—that boy was standing here, now, in front of them.
 

But that couldn’t be possible.
 

The boy was dead.
 

Only he wasn’t.
 

He was standing here, his clothes dirty, his hair a mess.