The Big Reap

20.

“That was some messed-up shit back there, dude,” said Gio, huffing and puffing while we sprinted for the auditorium, but somehow still finding breath to speak.

“In case you hadn’t caught on, Dead Guy I Stuck Into a Different Dead Guy’s Body, messed-up shit is sorta my specialty.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but even for you, man, this is fucking bugnuts.”

“Ugh,” said Theresa. “Don’t mention bugs.”

Kate looked at Theresa, and then back to me. “Bugs? What’d I miss?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Theresa said, “if you ever wanna sleep again at night.”

We sprinted past the busted down front doors, continued onward down the hall. No sign of Grigori. No signs of life at all, I thought.

Then a door opened to our right, yellow light spilling into the dim hall. Two girls deep in joking conversation shuffled, smiling, out. Their expressions faded to worry when they caught sight of us, and shot on past toward fear; an enormous afroed black woman arm-in-arm with a short, squat Pesci-in-Goodfellas-looking mofo; a bruised and battered waitress, her uniform spattered with blood; and a beefy, bearded, gore-streaked trucker with a crooked ear and a bevy of seeping wounds who was carrying a pipe caked with bits of rotting lung and heart and brain.

“Get back inside,” I said, jabbing my finger toward the classroom they’d just vacated. “Are there more of you in there?”

One of them nodded. The other elbowed her.

“It’s all right,” I said, “we’re not gonna hurt you. Just get back in there. Lock the door if the door locks. Barricade it either way. And don’t come out until the cops come get you. You understand?”

This time, they both nodded. Then retreated. The bar of light that shone underneath the door went out, and I heard the slide of something heavy being moved.

And we continued down the hall once more.

“You know, Sam,” said Kate some twenty silent paces later, “that shit back there with Drustanus and Yseult? Kinda sorta personal for me. I mean, those evil bastards upturned my life. Wrecked my place of business. Turned a table of my best tippers into the blood-drinking undead. Cheesy catchphrase aside, if that ain’t personal, then what the hell do you call it?”

“An average Tuesday?” Theresa ventured.

Kate laughed.

Despite myself — and these godawful circumstances — I couldn’t help but think I’d missed these three.

Up ahead, a child of twelve or so was slumped against the wall, two holes puncturing his neck, blood oozing down it and soaking into the collar of his shirt. “Grigori, you monster,” I muttered, and forced my new XL meat-suit to put on a burst of speed. Kate — not carrying fifty extra pounds of beer-and-chicken-fried-steak weight — still reached the kid first.

“He’s got a pulse,” she said, two fingers to his neck on the side opposite the wound, “but weak. He’s going to need a doctor, and soon.”

The sirens outside brayed loud enough to make my meat-suit’s ears pop. Lights, red and blue, splashed through the hashmarked windows facing the ruined Pancake Palace and projected strobing diamond patterns across the far wall of the hall. “He’ll get one,” I said. “Won’t be long before they wind up over here. Let’s try and keep their workload light, shall we?”

“Sam — up here!” Gio and Ter stood before a set of double doors a little ways down the darkened hall — the entrance to the auditorium. As they opened the doors wider, I heard the sound of children singing — “Luck Be a Lady,” unless my good ear deceived me.

And then a commotion.

And then screaming.

By the time I reached the auditorium door, Grigori had climbed onto the stage, which though bare of set-dressings was dotted with tweens in street clothes, their singing halted, many of them now cowering stage-right against the curtained wall. If he’d come at them from the other aisle, they would have had a shot at making the exit, which was stage-left, but Grigori was too clever for that, shepherding the whole flock toward the slaughter so he could regain his strength and make his escape. For the child in the hallway had not come close to slaking his thirst, healing his injuries, or restoring his human visage. In fact, looking at him, it almost made his appearance all the worse. His features were now half-human, half-ruined. His body, crushed from the ribcage down by the truck’s front grille, was reassembling itself unpleasantly before our eyes, muscle stretching, pulsing, splitting off as it coated exposed bone, vasculature spreading like some kind of malignant vine. As I watched, he reached into his gaping chest cavity and snapped a rib that had knit together crooked, wincing as he did. It came off in his hand, and then he reattached it once more, this time correctly.

He stepped toward the children, jaw as wide as an anaconda’s, outsized canines catching the footlights and gleaming sickly yellow. They cowered. Shrieked in terror. Wept at their fate.

Well, their almost-fate. Because that’s when I had me an idea.

Credit Kate and Ter and Gio for showing me I was not alone. That I was better with friends by my side.

No, I thought. Not friends. Family. Because we’d been to war together. We’d bonded in a way that couldn’t be broken. Found a strength together we lacked apart.

As could these kids.

As would these kids.

Grigori closed the gap between himself and the frightened children. I sprinted toward them, an old Chesterton quote ringing in my ears. “Fairy tales are more than true,” he’d said. “Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” These kids knew damn well the world was full of horrors; the news reminded them of that fact on the daily. It was time someone showed them they could do something about it.

As I belly-flopped onto the stage and scrabbled awkwardly to my feet, Grigori grabbed a child by the wrist, and pulled him close. Then he turned to face me, holding the boy between us like a shield.

“Any closer, and this boy dies.”

I stopped, and put my hands up. “You aim to kill him anyway,” I said. “You aim to kill them all.”

The kids behind him gasped, and cried, and wailed. Kate, Gio, and Theresa stood frozen in the aisles of the empty auditorium, the only people in the room not on the stage.

Grigori shrugged. “It’s true,” he said. “But perhaps, if you’re willing to let me leave, I’ll feed on only half of them. Or feed on each just half to death.”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

His one human eyebrow arched. Then the mental projection of the human face he struggled to put forth flickered, and the eyebrow disappeared.

“You do?” he asked, amused. “What’s that?”

“Your gaping chest contains a soul,” I said, my gaze leaving Grigori’s face for a moment and locking briefly with that of the trembling boy in his grasp. “Withered. Vestigial. Dead. Inaccessible to most, but attaining physical form the second I lay hands on you. Once it’s crushed, you’ll be no more, and you’ll no longer be able to hurt these kids, or anyone else.”

“I know this,” said Grigori impatiently, tightening his grip on the boy in his arms. “Why do you think I choose to use this child as a shield? You cannot reach into my chest through him.”

“True enough,” I said, raising my voice and hoping the kids behind would take the hint, “but that’s the thing.”

“What’s the thing?”

“I don’t have to be the one to crush it.”

His eyes widened.

I leapt at him, and grabbed his wrist, pulling it away from the young boy’s throat.

The boy, newly brave, twisted to face Grigori and drove his tiny hand into the monster’s chest, while as one, the children who’d been cowering behind Grigori pounced, coming to their fellow student’s aid.

And when the dust settled, Grigori was no more.

“Hell of a goddamn gamble, Sam.” This from Kate. “Turning these kids into monster-killers.”

“I encouraged them to protect themselves,” I said. “You of all people should get that.”

“I do,” she admitted. “But still. After today, they’re gonna have some serious shit to work out.”

“And their whole entire lives in which to do it.”

“Uh, guys?” Gio, trotting back into the auditorium from the front hall, which faced out toward the Pancake Palace crime scene. “I hate to break up this little philosophical discussion, but those of us stuck in their bodies for the long haul gotta motor. Them cops outside are headed this way.”

“You two got an escape plan?”

“Always, brother. We stashed our ride a couple blocks away before we boosted the truck. Clean papers, clean tags — both fake, of course, duped from an identical ride three states away, but they’ll hold up if someone runs ’em, and we got IDs to match.”

“The authorities are gonna be closing in fast. I hope your ride is speedy enough to get you outta here before the whole town gets locked down.”

Gio gave me a who-the-hell-you-think-you’re-talking-to look. “The beauty we boosted’s a 1970 Torino fastback with three hundred seventy-five horses under the hood. Only thing she can’t pass is a gas station.”

“Good. Take Kate with you. Keep her safe.”

Kate: “Hey!”

Gio: “We’ll take her, but we can’t promise she’ll be safe.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

It was Theresa who answered. “You think we been hiding out this whole last year? Well fuck you very much, Sam Thornton, cause we ain’t been running, we been fighting. In case you somehow failed to notice, shit’s gotten rough out in the world of late. Angels and demons and everything in between so intent on bashing in each others’ skulls, they no longer seem to care who gets caught up in the middle. I’m talking ordinary people caught up in shit they shouldn’t be — in a covert war that ain’t theirs to fight. So we been out there helping ’em, wherever and however we can. Kate wants in on that, she’s welcome, but she for damn sure won’t be safe. Wouldn’t blame her for saying no.”

“Actually,” she said, “count me in.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah?” asked Gio.

“Yeah,” said Kate. “You can see how far hiding got me. Mayhap it’s time for me to fight.”

Booted feet like hoof-beats as the cops stormed the front door. Not SWAT, I thought — not yet — just uniforms. The three’s window for escape was closing. Mine had closed already. Someone was gonna hafta delay the police, after all.

“This place got a back entrance?” I asked the kids.

One nodded, and pointed toward backstage. “Out the door and down the hall,” he said.

“Thanks.” Then, to my friends: “Go.”

“But Sam–”

“There isn’t time,” I said, biting back tears. “Just go.”

Kate hugged me, sobbing into my neck. Gio put a beefy hand onto my shoulder. And then the three of them took off, leaving as the cops came in.

The story I told the cops made no goddamn sense. I’d been eating breakfast at the pancake place. Three crazy people — all freaky and messed-up looking, like out of a horror movie — crashed a goddamn semi into the dining room, and made ground beef of half the patrons. They fled across the street to the school. Me and a couple other patrons followed them, trying to stop ’em before they could hurt the kids. Two we did. One we didn’t. But the kids were braver and tougher than the last one musta thought, because they defended themselves, and — thank God — came out on top. And I had no idea what happened to my fellow Good Samaritans.

They held my meat-suit for a week. He never once after I abandoned him contradicted my story. Nor did the children. And the sad state of the Brethren bodies aside, the physical evidence didn’t, either. Security cameras caught some of what transpired, and eyewitnesses supplied the rest. Eventually, they let him go a hero. I saw him on Barbara Walters a few months back. He said you never know in those moments how you’re gonna react. Said the whole thing was a blur. True enough for him, I guess.

Some shit I seen, I wish like hell it were true for me as well.