Tin Swift

CHAPTER THREE

Cedar Hunt shifted in the saddle, one hand on Flint’s neck to calm him as he scanned the horizon. The Bitterroot Mountains rose up to the north, and the wind that combed the top of those peaks was restless with winter’s chill. The rains were coming. From the look of the sky, it was about to break open.

If they were going to get around the mountains here in Idaho and well on to Mae Lindson’s sisterhood in Kansas, they’d need more than haste. They’d need supplies.

“Think we’ll make Fort Boise soon?” Rose asked, riding up beside him.

Cedar had spent an uncomfortable night shackled up, but the beast had not transformed him in body or mind. Rose had been chatty and happy since finding him still a man, and still a reasonable one at that, when she unlocked him just before dawn.

“Maybe tomorrow, or day after,” Cedar said. “Longer if it rains.”

A drop plinked down on the brim of his hat.

“Oh, now you’ve gone and jinxed us, Mr. Hunt.” Rose laughed and turned up the collar on her wool coat before tightening her hat’s chin strap.

“Vicinity’s not too far out of the way,” Cedar said. “We can take the night there and let the worst of the storm pass over.”

“I’ll tell the Madders we’ll be in town today. I’m sure they’ll be pleased as pigs in a potato patch.” She turned her horse and headed back to the big, slow-moving wagon a ways behind them.

Cedar urged Flint ahead of the party. An hour later, he’d made his way through the constant rain, down a deer trail and up a ridge, bringing him to a flat, short valley between hills. Across that flat valley spread a ramshackle collection of maybe thirty or so houses and shacks made of adobe and wood.

Vicinity.

Both a mining town and a trading post, Vicinity was an easy stop for folk taking the trail to Oregon or California.

Peppered with sagebrush and scrub, built without much thought to roads or the whyfors of coming and going, for that matter, the town washed up the hillsides and out to where the valley closed into a V.

There should be a barn they could stay the night, if the townfolk were hospitable, or agreeable to payment or barter. It was as good a rest as they’d have for miles. A lucky port in the storm.

Still, he paused, staring out across the place, listening for the sounds that usually filled a town. There was nothing but the rattle of rain on his hat, coat, and land around him, and the clack of the bit Flint rolled in his mouth.

No other sounds of life.

But there was a scent on the wind. A scent he knew well. It was the smell of the Strange, and it was more. It was the scent of the Holder, some part of it, here, nearly a state away from where it’d gone flying. He’d promised the Madders he would help them gather up the bits of it. Maybe his chance to do so was coming sooner than he’d thought.

The beast within him slammed hard against his will, raging. The beast, the curse he carried, hungered to hunt the Strange, kill them, destroy them. Cedar had no fondness for the nightmare creatures who slipped across this land either. But he held tight to his reasoning.

He wiped some of the damp off his face and peered through the failing light for a glint of lantern, a puff of chimney smoke. The town was as still as a broken watch. It was as if all the people were off to church, leaving not a child, dog, or chicken behind to stir.

That wasn’t right. Wasn’t the natural way of a town.

They should ride on, ride around this puzzlement. There was death and dying here. And the Strange lurked nearby, maybe the Holder too.

But with night coming on and rain drenching them through, they needed a place to rest. If Vicinity had suffered some kind of sickness or disaster and cleared out months ago, there would still be supplies they could scavenge and a roof and walls against the cold and rain.

Instinct might tell him to run. But reason told him they should check the town first, and ride on by only if there were actual signs of danger.

Cedar clicked his tongue and turned Flint back to rejoin the others.

Bryn Madder was on the little roan, forging the trail, with Rose and Mae right behind him. The bulky wagon brought up the rear, clattering along like a crazy circus sideshow all its own. Cedar didn’t know if Wil rode in the wagon or if he had gone out hunting, as was his habit just before sunset.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” Bryn said when he caught sight of Cedar. The brass monocle over his eye had just a glass lens now. Bryn rubbed the rain off it with the cuff of his shirt. “You find us some place a little drier to stop, like maybe beneath Niagara Falls?”

“Town just up a bit,” Cedar said. “Vicinity. Looks empty. Stinks of the Strange, maybe more than that.”

Bryn’s quick grin split his beard. “Sounds about right. You do have a way of stumbling into the most interesting of predicaments, Mr. Hunt.”

He maneuvered his horse—well, the dead man’s horse—past Cedar, following the trail like he was clopping along in full daylight. A second later, Cedar heard the click and scratch of a match as one of those green globe lanterns the brothers always carried caught flame.

Bryn tied the glass globe to the saddle, secured so the globe sat snug near his knee. From the clever positioning of mirror-polished metal inside that glass, the globe gave out a brighter and wider circle of light than any lantern Cedar had seen. And since it took such a wee flame to throw that much light, the thick glass wouldn’t warm to the touch for a long while.

Rose rode up to him, Mae right beside her. Rose had a lead line on Mae’s mule. He didn’t know when the girl had decided to do so, but he was grateful for her thoughtfulness. Mae must be deep enough in the thrall of the voices calling her home that she didn’t know what Rose had done.

“Did I hear you say the town’s ahead?” Rose asked wistfully. “That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve heard for weeks.”

“Might be trouble,” Cedar said.

“What sort?” Rose asked, glancing at Bryn riding off with a ray of sunshine tacked to his saddle.

“The town looks deserted. And I smell the Strange.”

Rose shrugged. “You always smell the Strange, Mr. Hunt. You’re made for it. Why, I’d bet if there was a bogey or ghooley in a ten-mile range, you’d know it.”

“I would. And I believe there is. So keep your gun handy.”

“Always do, Mr. Hunt.”

Mae didn’t say a single thing. She just sat her saddle, fingers working against each other like she was shucking peas from a pod. Her eyes were glassy, dazed, her lips pale. Full caught in the madness.

One thing was sure. When they made it to the sisterhood, and the witches gave Mae back her slipping mind, Cedar was going to sit down with each and every one of those women. No one should be driven from their good sense because of an old promise. A promise based on fear.

Mae had mumbled plenty during the three weeks on the trail. Pleading to the voices in her mind, maybe pleading to the memories of her past. Saying she wasn’t evil. Saying magic didn’t so much go bad in her hands as just set things to happening in the most final of ways. Her magic leaned toward curses, the making and breaking of them. Leaned toward vows and binding things and people together.

The sisters had turned that sort of magic on her, and bound her to the soil of the coven. So if ever she strayed too far from the sisterhood, she’d have to return home.

No matter what was in her way—weather, mountains, or madness.

Mae might not complain of the fine cruelty of such a binding, but Cedar wondered if maybe the sisters really didn’t want her home. Were maybe working hard to make sure she died trying to get there.

The wagon rattled up, Alun in the high driver’s seat. He’d traded his kerchief for a battered sombrero, the wide brim keeping most of his bulk dry beneath it. The pipe clenched in his teeth drew cherry red and the sweet smoke of tobacco rolled circles under the brim.

Cadoc Madder must be inside the wagon.

“Trouble, I hear, Mr. Hunt? Or town?” Alun called out.

“Could be both,” Cedar said. “Or the Strange. Vicinity is just ahead and empty.”

Alun reached down and pulled a shotgun the size of a small cannon up at his side, resting the barrel across the brake board, where his foot was braced. “Suppose this town has a saloon?”

“Reckon it does,” Cedar said.

“Then lead the way! One thing about the Strange, they aren’t much for drinking. Should be plenty for us no matter the state of things.”

Cedar gave Rose a look, but she already had her gun resting across her saddle horn.

No need to warn her to take care of herself again. Girl had good survival instincts. And that gun of hers had gained a scope and a few other bits he knew weren’t attached to it just a day ago.

“You tinker with the gun?” He turned and followed the bobbing green bubble of light on Bryn’s saddle, Rose and Mae falling in behind him, the Madders bringing up the rear.

“Just a little,” she said. “Last night I wasn’t sleeping much and I got to thinking that the shotgun has a heck of a kick, and I could probably harness that energy and use it for a coil, if I had some copper wire and a spring, and a second barrel…” She pressed her lips together, then chuckled. “My apologies for rambling, Mr. Hunt.”

“No apology needed,” Cedar said. “Devising is a skill men hock the farm for. The wild sciences aren’t easy for most to comprehend, much less make practical of. You’ve a gift, Miss Small.”

“You’re kind to say so,” Rose murmured, looking down modestly and fussing with the metal trinkets in her pockets.

Mae was silent, swaying with the saddle, her face tipped up just high enough that her lips and chin caught the fall of rain off the brim of her bonnet.

Cedar caught sight of Wil moving through the scrub, following along cautiously. Wil had been captured by the Strange, used as a slave by them for years. He would know better than to do anything foolish.

Cedar navigated down the muddy path that served as a road into the town. He caught the scent of the Strange on the wind again, and again the odd tang that he’d last smelled on the Holder. Just strong enough to sense before it faded away.

They came upon the first houses set out in a fairly straight row along both sides of the road. The homes looked strong and weather-worthy and hadn’t fallen into disrepair.

But there was not a light in a window, not a stir in a yard. The smell of the Strange lay heavy here, like a low fog clinging to the ground, kicked up by their horses’ hooves. Bryn Madder paused where the road took a sharp turn to the left, leading into the heart of Vicinity.

Cedar pulled up beside him. The house ahead was situated so that the front door was visible. And so were the man’s legs across the threshold.

The man wasn’t asleep—held too damn still for that. Cedar smelled death and blood.

“Will you look at that?” Bryn asked. “Terrible way to let the draft in. Maybe we should roust him up, see if he’s breathing.”

“Maybe we should warn the womenfolk,” Cedar said.

“They’ve seen worse,” Bryn said.

That was true. Cedar took point and urged Flint down the road. More houses, none of the doors open, no other sign of people, except for the smell of blood and rot, and nothing and no one at the windows.

The town opened up into an area that had been cleared and flattened, likely for gatherings. They stopped there.

“Where do you suppose all the people are?” Rose asked. “I mean the live ones?”

“There are no live ones,” Cedar said.

“That fella laying in the doorway?” she said.

“Dead,” Bryn answered.

“Don’t think this is a place where wise men shelter,” Alun Madder said. “We’d best be moving on through.”

“Might be a thicket off east a bit,” Bryn suggested. “I’ll see if there’s anything to stand between us and the rain.”

“But we could find supplies here,” Rose said. “We need more than what we have to get the horses to Fort Boise.”

She was right. They all knew it.

Cedar nodded. “Let’s see if we can find a mercantile. Take what’s been left behind for ourselves, then check the barns for grain.”

“Might as well see if there’s liquor at hand while we’re at it,” Alun said. “For medicinal purposes, Miss Small.”

Rose shook her head. “No need to make excuses for me, Mr. Madder. I know you and your brothers polished off the last of the moonshine a week ago. And blew up your still.”

“All the more reason to restock,” he said.

“Would you help me get Mrs. Lindson into the wagon first?” Rose asked. “I don’t think she can sit the saddle for much longer and with dark coming on, I’d hate to discover she’d dropped off in a ditch come morning.”

“It’d be my pleasure.” Alun swung down out of the driver’s seat, dropping to the ground much more nimbly than expected from a man his size, and tromped over to her.

He and Rose coaxed Mae to dismount, then Rose led her carefully through the muck and mud to the back of the wagon.

Cedar stayed right where he was, one hand on his gun, his gaze restlessly searching the streets and houses for movement. The beast within him had gone still. Not because the danger had passed. No—because the danger was near upon them.

“You feel it, don’t you, Mr. Hunt?” Alun asked, coming back around the front of the wagon. He’d brought that monster of a gun with him and it rode slung across his shoulder with a wide leather strap so it could rest at his hip, in easy reach.

He took the reins of Rose’s horse and Mae’s mule from Cedar.

“The Strange?” Cedar asked.

“And more,” Alun agreed. “Death.”

“The Holder’s been here,” Cedar said quietly.

Alun’s head snapped up like he’d just been slapped. “Are you sure?”

Cedar nodded.

“How? How can you tell?”

“I can taste it on the wind. In the rain.” He could feel it in his bones too, just like he could feel the touch of the Strange left lingering in the crannies and nooks of the place. This near to a piece of the Holder, he felt like his bones were tuning forks, resonating with the awareness of that odd device.

“You’ve a promise to keep us, Mr. Hunt,” Alun began, “to retrieve the Holder.”

“I’ll see it stays kept, if it’s near,” Cedar said. “But not while Rose and Mae are in this town. Whatever thing drove off the townfolk lingers. Once the women are safe, I’ll hunt the Holder.”

“Then we best be quickly moving on,” Alun said. “See to the womenfolk.”

“This woman folk isn’t going anywhere,” Rose said, striding over from the wagon with a lit globe in one hand. “Unless it’s looking for supplies.”

“Miss Small—,” Alun said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Madder, but my mind’s set on this. We need food. We need blankets. And any coal, bullets, or medicines this place might have stashed. Plus, there is no way in tarnation those two hayburners of yours are going to find enough to forage once we hit the snows.”

“This town isn’t a proper place for a lady such as you, Miss Small,” Alun insisted.

Rose pushed her hat back, the tips of her fingers bare and dirty at the nail though a knit glove covered the remainder of her hand.

“Look in my eyes, Mr. Madder. What you’re going to find there is exactly what kind of a lady I am. But since you’re in a hellfire hurry, I’ll spell it out quick for you. I am a very determined lady. And tonight I am determined to loot this town.”

She took the reins of her horse out of his hand, leaving Mae’s mule in his keep. Then she swung up into the saddle. “You menfolk can do what you want, but I’m going hunting.” She turned her horse into the town.

“I’ll go with her,” Cedar said. “Stay with the wagon.” He clicked his tongue and Flint started after Rose.

“There’s Strange afoot, Rose,” Cedar said.

“So you’ve said, Mr. Hunt. We have guns. They don’t. Between the two of us”—she paused and glanced off to her left, where Wil was slipping through the shadows between houses—“the three of us,” she corrected, “I think we’ll manage.”

Cedar smiled despite himself. The girl had more spunk than a pot full of peppers.

“I think that place there has a sign on it,” Rose said. “Maybe a post office and general store?”

They got close enough that the light from the globe Rose held up caught at the whitewashed letters on the sign, neatly outlined in black. “Brown’s General Store,” Rose read out loud. “Good place to start.”

She swung down out of the saddle and threw the reins over the hitching post.

Cedar did the same, cocking his gun before walking up the step to the door. “Hold the light high, Miss Small.”

She did so, the light coming down over his shoulder and dusting off the shadows. He pushed the door inward with only a bit of a creak.

The smell of death hit him hard and full in the face. In the light of Rose’s lantern, the bodies of four people lying on the wood floor came clearly into view. A man, a woman, and two young boys. Dead as dead could be.

“Oh, God rest their souls,” Rose breathed behind him.

Cedar strode into the room, but Rose hesitated. He heard her pull the shotgun she carried before stepping in.

He didn’t see anyone else in the long, narrow room. Nothing was moving, not even a scratching of rats. He crouched next to the bodies and turned the man over so he could see what injury had felled him.

The man’s eyes were missing. As if they’d been sucked out like a grape from its skin, leaving clean bloody sockets behind.

He was also missing his thumbs.

“Was it man or animal?” Rose asked, bringing the light with her. She caught sight of the man’s face and made a small sound in the back of her throat.

“It was the Strange. Or at least they smell of it.” Cedar rested the man back the way he’d been and moved the woman enough to see that she was missing both her ears and her nose. As for the young’uns, both of them had holes where their hearts should be.

“Indian don’t mutilate like this. Could be a white man who likes to collect souvenirs.” He frowned. “Not an animal, at any rate. I’ve never seen anything like this from Strange either. The injuries don’t add up to the thing that killed them. Well, except for the boys.”

The other injuries weren’t enough to kill a person right out, and certainly not enough to drop the entire family in a heap, as if they fell dead at the exact same moment.

Was that something the Holder could do? Fall down over a town and kill everyone dead? If that was the case, who, or what, had strolled through town gathering up body parts like they were out picking berries?

The bodies were cold, but no longer stiff. Fresh enough it hadn’t been long, but not so long the bodies had bloated. Whatever had dropped them dead had done it within the week.

“They look picked over,” Rose said. “Just bits taken.”

“Harvested.” Cedar stood and looked around the room. Stock and supplies filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves. There was enough food and blankets here to outfit them for the road. They’d just need to find grain and hay for the horses to finish stocking up.

“Looks like plenty here we can take with us,” he said. “We can load up and move on.”

“We’re going to bury them first.” Rose’s voice was tight, her face set in something more than determination. It was set in sorrow.

“Dig graves?” he asked. “Night’s upon us, Miss Small. Whatever or whoever did this to these people could be nearby. I don’t think slinging a shovel is going to do us, or in the long run them, any good.”

“I won’t leave them like this. And you shouldn’t want to either, Mr. Hunt. They deserve a decent burial. They deserve to have their souls put to a proper rest.”

“I agree they deserve a decent burial,” he said. “But it is too dangerous for us to administer it.”

“I’ve heard you,” she said. “But there isn’t anything about this new land that isn’t dangerous. That doesn’t mean we have to be the kind of people who turn away from the mercy at hand.”

Rose walked to the back of the room, the lantern light swinging shadows and bright at each other like trapeze artists reaching for the catch. She picked up a shovel and then, without a word, walked across the room and out the door, leaving the dark to swallow Cedar whole.

He took in a lungful of it and sighed. The girl meant well, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was dig a grave, much less dig one big enough for four, or who knew how many more. He walked over to the counter and rested his hand there.

A song, like sour trumpets trembling in the distance rose up through his fingertips. He knew that fleeting tune, knew its haunting rhythms and trills. It was the song of the Strange, of one Strange in particular.

Mr. Shunt.

Suddenly, the chill of the night and the dark and death squeezed down around him. They’d killed Mr. Shunt. He’d seen him killed, seen his innards stretched out and pounded to a mash even the crows wouldn’t pick over. He’d seen the bits of Mr. Shunt smashed apart by Jeb Lindson, Mae’s dead husband.

There was no possibility a man, nor any other creature, could come back together after the taking apart Mr. Shunt had received.

The wind huffed against the rafters, silencing the song as a fresh scatter of rain broke from the sky.

But then, there was no man nor creature like Mr. Shunt. If there was anything in this world unkillable, it would be him.

Suddenly, the harvest made sense. Mae had said Mr. Shunt fell into pieces and sewed himself back together again. Maybe he needed more parts.

But if Shunt were still in the town, hell, if he’d been within thirty miles of the place, Cedar would know. He wasn’t here. But he had been.

“Mr. Hunt?” Rose said from the door, her lantern clutched tight in one hand, the shovel in the other. “I think you’d better see this.”

“We’re leaving,” Cedar said, making to walk around behind the counter for the supplies. “Now. Come take an armful.”

Rose didn’t say anything. Not a peep. Wasn’t like her.

He glanced up. She was still standing in the doorway, the shine of light carving out holes of dark against the sweet angles of her face. There was more than just rain falling from the brim of her hat to wet her face. There were tears.

“Rose?” He came out from behind the counter and walked to her. “Rose?”

“I looked into houses. A half dozen houses,” she said. “They’re all dead.” She looked up into his face. “Children too, Mr. Hunt. Little babies missing their feet and hands, all carved up…”

Cedar wanted to tell her not to worry about the dead. To tell her that if they left these people behind it was a civilized choice. But that was not true. The place stank of the Strange. And he had seen the Strange do terrible things with the unburied dead.

“We’ll do what we can for them,” he said. “Give them a grave and a prayer, the only mercy still in our hands.”

Rose wiped at her nose and nodded. “We’ll need to gather them all up. Maybe in the middle of town? The clearing?”

“That should do,” Cedar said. “Let’s get the Madders to help. Quickly.”

Cedar followed her back out into the rain. They mounted up and tracked back to the wagon.

Alun was leaning at the side of it, the huge brim of his hat and the angle of the wagon blocking rain and wind. He puffed on his pipe while the youngest and tallest Madder, Cadoc, paced about, a strange device in his hands.

The device resembled an ear trumpet. He held it up to one ear, a rope running from the ear trumpet to wrap around the top of a cane in his left hand that he stuck into the ground. He paused for a moment, as if listening through the ear horn, then pulled the cane tip out of the soil and swung it to tap the ear trumpet before spiking the cane back into the wet ground again.

Cedar didn’t know what Cadoc Madder was doing, but then he rarely could fathom the man’s actions.

“We’ll be needing your help,” Cedar said. “Bryn’s too.”

“Are we hunting the Holder now, Mr. Hunt?” Alun asked.

“No. We are hauling and digging,” Cedar said. “There’s dead in this town. Rose and I have agreed we’ll see to their burial before we move on.”

Cadoc Madder had stopped pacing. He turned to look at them as if they’d suddenly dropped out of a blue sky and brought the moon down with them.

Alun pulled the pipe from between his teeth and pointed it at Cedar. “What do you think killed all these people? The Holder. It fell into this town, and snuffed their lives out like a wet wick. If a piece of it remains behind, the death will spread, creep to the next town, and kill off the living there. Finding the Holder is a damn sight more important than burying the dead.”

“The Strange have been here,” Cedar said. “Surely you know what sport the Strange can have with the dead.”

“Of course I know! Hang the dead and hang the Strange. If we find the Holder we won’t need to stay here to see any of it.”

Cedar drew his gun and cocked back the hammer. “Rose Small, myself, and these bullets disagree with you.”

Both Madder brothers went stone cold. Even the smoke from Alun’s pipe seemed to stop moving.

“No need for guns,” Mae said as she came round from back of the wagon leading her mule. “Let us tend those who have been lost.” She wore a duster—Cedar thought it might belong to one of the Madder brothers, and though she’d rolled up the sleeves, it was huge on her thin frame. She’d changed her bonnet for a man’s hat—again, Cedar guessed it to be one of the Madders’.

He had no idea what she was doing out of bed, nor if she was in her right mind.

“Enough standing and pointing weapons,” Mae insisted. “Let’s put these people to rest so we can move on and find the Holder.” Her voice was clear. Strong.

Alun stared at her warily, as one might a bowl of nitroglycerin left to boil on the stove. “The sooner we’re to it, the sooner we’ll be quit of this place,” he finally said. “Cadoc, fetch up brother Bryn, and bring the wagon and the steam shovel along.”

Cadoc swung up into the wagon and started off, the wheels sending a spattering of mud to slap their boots.

Alun turned an eye on Cedar. “I hope you know what it is you’re doing, Mr. Hunt. Whole town of the dead is going to take time to bury, and we haven’t that to spare.”

“You bring out the digging device, I’ll gather wood to fire it.”

“Rose and I can gather the wood,” Mae said. “Unless you’d rather we gather the bodies, Mr. Hunt?”

No. He very much did not want them to be carrying dead bodies around like kindling. He didn’t know how long this break of clarity she was experiencing was going to last.

“Keep your guns ready,” he said. “Both of you. This night is filled with harm.”

“We’ll do just that.” Rose gave him a look that meant she’d also keep an eye on Mae. “If we need for anything, we’ll come calling.”

Cedar nodded. Rose could more than look after herself and Mae to boot. Gathering wood, even in the night where wild things crept, was a fair shake better than dragging dead folk into a pile.

Wil skulked out of the shadows, his eyes catching copper from the low light of Rose’s lantern. He padded silently over to Rose and Mae and looked up at Cedar. It wouldn’t be the new moon for a few days yet, which meant he would remain in wolf form until then.

He’d go with the women to gather wood and watch for danger.

Rose nudged her horse off a bit while Mae swung up atop her mule. “Since we’re gathering in the center of town,” Rose said, “let’s see if there’s a woodpile near to it. If not, then we’ll check other houses close by.”

“Good,” Mae agreed.

“Didn’t figure you to be the kind of man who endangered the people under your care,” Alun said as the women headed off. “Some other reason you’re fired up to bury the dead?”

“The Strange are near. The ground stinks of them.”

“All the more reason for us to be moving on. Hastily.”

“The bodies have been picked apart by Mr. Shunt.”

Alun fell into a full-halt silence. “That can’t be so,” he breathed. “You killed him.”

“Jeb Lindson killed him,” Cedar said. “Those bodies we found have been gleaned and cleaned. Bits missing. Specific bits, as if just the best of each person was taken.”

“You’re sure it’s not an animal?”

“Yes.”

“Savages?” Alun asked.

“No.”

“And you’re certain it’s Shunt?”

“I know that devil,” Cedar said. “The smell of him on the bodies. The song of him left in the things he’s touched.”

Alun just stood there in the rain as if that news rolled like an earthquake under his boots and changed the landscape around him.

“We should look for him,” Alun said.

“He’s not in the town,” Cedar said. “Come and gone, maybe far on as a week ago.”

Alun got moving again and Cedar paced him atop Flint.

Finally Alun said, “Dark things slip in this night, Mr. Hunt. You can feel the Strange?”

“Yes.”

“They can feel you too,” Alun noted. “They know the one man who can track them, hunt them, tear them apart. They know you’re here, you and your Pawnee curse. And they don’t fear the dark.”

“That suits me fine,” Cedar said. “Because neither do I.”

It didn’t take long to reach the center of town. Cedar and Alun got to work moving the dead, starting with the family in the general store, and lifting, or as the circumstance required, dragging the bodies to the clearing.

Cadoc finally returned with the wagon, having found Bryn. After a brief talk with Alun, they unloaded several crates and a boiler out of the wagon. Bryn got busy assembling pieces of a device that looked more suited to pumping a well than digging a grave, while Cadoc and Alun took the wagon farther off to gather up any more people they could find.

It was grim work. Silent work.

Cedar had done his share of digging graves in his life. He’d stood above far too many saying his last farewells. His wife’s. His child’s.

Many more.

These people were strangers to him, yet the shame of so many lost, stripped and picked over like a feast of convenience, burned a deep anger in him.

He carried a small body toward the pile, each step slower than the last.

The beast within twisted and stretched. It wanted out. It wanted to hunt. It wanted to destroy the Strange. It wanted to destroy Mr. Shunt.

Cedar found it more and more difficult to find a reason to fight that need. A man’s hands could do as much damage as the beast. A man’s hands could tear a person limb from limb. Why not let the beast take his mind and use his hands for its needs?

“Mr. Hunt?” Rose said. Again, he realized.

He blinked until he could see the world. He’d been standing for some time now.

There was no rain, just the cold exhalation of the night against his skin.

“You can put her right there,” Rose said gently.

Cedar looked down. He held a girl in his arms. Maybe two or three years old. Not much bigger than his own daughter had been when he held her, dead, in his arms.

This little girl was cold and gone, a splash of blood on her dress around the hole where her stomach should be. There were no tomorrows left for his daughter. And now there were no tomorrows left for this child.

Cedar swallowed hard and placed her gently next to a woman missing the top half of her skull. He didn’t know if it was her mother. He hoped it might be.

“I’m going off for more wood,” Rose said. “Mrs. Lindson is going to stay with Bryn Madder to help mind the fire and boiler. Are you all right?”

In the firelight Rose looked softer. Lovely as an angel come to comfort. Cedar knew she had no reason to tell him what everyone was doing.

She must have seen him standing there, frozen with grief and memories, the dead girl in his arms. Her words had tethered him back to the night, eased the beast, and shaken the memory’s hold.

Rose was a practical woman. And kind.

“I’ll come along with you,” he said.

“No need, Mr. Hunt. There’s a good stack just behind that house over there. One or two more loads and Mr. Madder says he’ll have enough for the digging matic to start working.”

Cedar glanced over at Mae, who was working next to Bryn Madder. They had built a fire that could likely be seen for twenty miles.

The boiler was now attached by long metal tubes to the pump device, and Bryn was wrenching wheels onto the base of the thing. It looked like a railroad handcart, with a lumpy brass teakettle the size of a pony bolted to it and a wooden shovel attached by long handles to the front, controlled by pulleys and ropes. Probably a mining matic the brothers had devised.

“I’d prefer to come with you,” Cedar said.

Rose inhaled as if to say more, then stopped. She glanced at the dead girl in the pile, then at his hands and coat, which were both bloody enough, the rain couldn’t wash them clean.

Finally, she looked at his eyes. Likely seeing the sorrow he could not hide.

“Of course, Mr. Hunt,” she said softly. “I’d appreciate your company.”

He walked with her to a lean-to that had been built to keep the worst of the weather off the wood stacked up against a house. There wasn’t enough room in that small shed for two, so he waited outside.

“Enough firewood here to keep a person warm till next summer,” Rose said as she bent beneath the roof eve and piled several pieces into her arms.

“That’s true,” Cedar said distractedly. The night wind brought with it the sound of crying, the soft weeping of a child. A child close by.

“Have you looked in the house across the way there for bodies?” he asked.

“Not yet. I thought after I gathered the wood, I’d help out finding people.”

“I’m going to look inside,” Cedar said.

“I’ll come with you if you wait,” Rose called back.

He didn’t wait. He strode up to the back door of the house and tried the latch.

The door opened onto the kitchen. A woman lay on the floor. She was missing both of her arms. Silent. Dead.

In the far corner of the room huddled a child. He’d guess her to be maybe eight or ten years old. Still in her nightgown, bareheaded, barefoot, her cheek tipped onto her bent knees, her hands gently clasping her ankles.

She didn’t move. But a soft, wheezing cry drifted from the corner of the room. Cedar put his hand on the doorjamb. No song of the Strange came to him. He took a cautious step into the room.

“Child?” he said quietly.

The girl still didn’t stir. But the wheezy sob continued.

Cedar crossed the kitchen, carefully stepping around the mother, and knelt in front of the girl.

“There, now,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t startle her.

At his touch, the song of the Strange shot through him like greased lightning, cracking in his skull and stabbing straight through his feet to fuse him to the earth.

The Strange hadn’t just touched this girl, they had infested her.

He could feel a tremble, a ticking beneath his fingers.

The girl was not a girl. Or at least not anymore. Now she was a hollowed-out shell. A doll with clockwork innards that ticked, ticked, ticked, slowly winding down while leather bellows wheezed out the last of the air it had been pumping into her lungs.

The Strange had made her. Or remade her.

The girl fell sideways. A metal key stuck out of her back. A small key made of tin that ground to a stop like a music box striking the last tine.

“Mr. Hunt?” It was Rose, come into the room.

“Rose!” Cedar called. “Don’t!”

But it was too late. The key stopped moving. Touching the girl had sprung the Strange trap. He’d set off some kind of trigger set deep within her. A trigger that sparked a short fuse.

Cedar was on his feet, running, throwing himself to shield Rose. They tumbled out the door, but the explosion was immense. The kitchen, the mother, and the girl flew into bits. A barrage of flesh and bone and wood rained down around them where they lay out in the mud. His leather duster shielded him from the worst of it.

But Rose was not so lucky. The tin key arrowed into her left shoulder and burrowed in deep. She yelled, and her eyes went wide before they rolled back in her head.

“Rose?” Cedar lifted up off her. She was breathing, fast and shallow, but she did not come to. There was too much blood. Her blood.

He needed Mae. Needed to get that bit of metal out of her. Needed medicines and stitching and herbs.

Cedar swept Rose up into his arms, his heart drumming hard.

A sound behind him made him turn.

Even in the darkness, the mess of blood and flesh from the explosion was startling.

But not as startling as the dead mother who lay on the ground and shuddered. Something—no, not something; the Strange, ghostlike with too many eyes, too many mouths, too many arms—pulled up from the ground beneath her and slipped inside her like a man shrugs into an ill-fitted shirt.

The mother stopped shaking. Then she sat straight up, and got to her feet.

Her ruined face twisted in inhuman glee as she limped toward Cedar. “Hunter,” she exhaled.

Cedar had seen the Strange wear the dead once before. Didn’t know how they did it. Didn’t have time to question. But he knew they were damn hard to kill.

He shifted his hold on Miss Small and drew his gun. He unloaded three bullets straight into the mother’s heart.

And still she kept coming.

He couldn’t fight with Rose in his arms, and he was not about to put her down. So he strode to the center of the town.

“Madders!” he yelled as he jogged toward the fire. “We have a problem.”

As he rounded the last house before the clearing, he saw that the pile of dead bodies they’d so carefully stacked up was now much less carefully unstacking itself.

The dead were rising. Strange slinking down out of the hills and up into bodies to try them on for size.

Vicinity’s townfolk rose up with the look of murder in their eyes. And started toward him.