Hellfire (10 page)

“No,” Ozzie said softly. “Monsters aren’t real.”

“I know. I don’t want them to be real, but I have to believe in them now. The pressure was all leaked out when the monster wrecked the engine, but the locomotive accelerated by some outside power. It got going fast enough to fly off the rails and into the bayou.”

Ozzie’s mouth dropped open. A patient questioning his own sanity was one of the surest signs of mental health, or at least the road to it. Maybe she was the one believing something untrue.

She then shook her head. “But there’s no such thing as monsters.”

“There are now,” Kemp replied.

The room suddenly turned cold. She pulled her hands up and crossed her arms tightly. Kemp shifted on the mattress, as if he wanted to get up to comfort her, but the straps held him tight.

She turned away. “Stop it. You’re frightening me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to, but I have to tell the truth. There is something evil out there, and it is going to come back.”

Ozzie turned back to him. “How do you know that?”

“The light told me,” Kemp said softly. “I had a vision while I fell from the Rail Marshal’s airship.”

Ozzie took a long, cleansing breath. She had almost begun to believe the patient’s story again. Fortunately, it had gone so far that she found a hole to climb out of it. She let her arms down to her sides and turned back to her practiced smile.

“Mr. Kemp, gods may have spoken to prophets in ancient times, but this is 1856.”

“He did!” Kemp’s voice skipped to a higher tone. “I didn’t want it, but I have a mission. I have to get out of here and warn everybody!”

“No, Mr. Kemp,” Ozzie said. “You’re not well. I agree that it is uncanny that you and Mr. Flipp are telling similar stories, but that’s all they are, stories. He likely added to them in your mind when he came in here.”

“I’m not crazy!” Kemp half-shouted.

“We don’t like to call patients ‘crazy.’ You’re unwell, and we’ll help you get better.”

“Prove it!” Kemp demanded. “Prove I’m crazy. There’s no proof!”

Ozzie sighed. He-said-she-said was a useless game. It would probably be a waste of time to show him proof, but it could help, too. She tried to think what bit of logic Dr. Sims would point out. There wasn’t too much to go on since the farmers who found him weren’t there to explain how silly it was to survive a fall from an airship, but he did have those stitches.

“Tell me again, when was the train wreck?”

“Yesterday,” Kemp said firmly.

“And you said the monster scratched you?”

“No, it clawed me,” Kemp corrected her sharply. “It bit down like the claw of a huge crawdad on my shoulder.”

“And the farmer’s wife stitched you up? Yesterday?”

“Yes, then.”

Ozzie took a step toward him. Carefully, making sure to keep clear of his teeth in case he lost his airs of civility and turned violent, she pulled down the collar of his gown to show his shoulder, where the bandage from earlier rested.

Kemp rolled his head back and eyed the shoulder.

Ozzie pulled the bandage free. All that was underneath was a neat line of scar tissue and a few small scabs where Dr. Sims had taken out the thread.

“See? This cut on your shoulder has been healed up for a week. Getting clawed by a monster was just your imagination.”

Kemp’s jaw dropped open. “I got those stitches yesterday.”

“No, you had them removed this morning,” Ozzie told him.

“This morning? Did I lose a day?” Kemp asked. He shook his head. “No, it’d have to be weeks. What day is it?”

“It’s the twentieth of June,” Ozzie told him. “See? You’re unwell. And we’re here to help you get better. Mr. Flipp disturbed you, and I’m sorry for that. He hasn’t been well since he was brought to the hospital, but he is getting better.”

“The only thing that makes him better is huffing enough ether to get out of his own head,” Kemp snapped.

“That’s enough,” Ozzie said. She put his collar back and walked toward the door.

“Wait!”

Ozzie paused and turned back.

“Help me,” Kemp said. “Please. I know I’m not insane. Deep down, you might know it’s true.”

She did feel it somewhere deep down, as if a warm voice was telling her, but she had to ignore it for logic’s sake. Ozzie shook her head slowly and tried to smile. “I’m going to come back with Jim, and we’ll have a nice lunch.”

“No, I have to get out of here!” Kemp shouted.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t do that. You’re not well.”

Kemp began rocking on the bed, throwing himself against the straps over and over.

Ozzie winced. “Stop that.”

He only replied with a frustrated growl.

“You’re just going to wear yourself out fighting,” she told him. Without another word, she walked out of the room and shut the door behind her. The sounds of Kemp’s struggle trickled through the heavy oak.

Ozzie tried to pay no attention to it. She turned back to the hall, where Jim had a bucket and worked mopping up the stew that had spilled earlier when he had caught Flipp. Ozzie picked up the ether-soaked apron and dropped it into his bucket.

“How is Mr. Flipp, Jim?” she asked.

“He’s sleeping like a baby. Snortin’ that much ether, it’s no wonder.”

“Right. Mr. Kemp will need a few minutes to calm himself down before we’re ready to try lunch again.”

“Yes’m.”

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. Talking with patients was so taxing. “He’s got delusions of monsters, just like Mr. Flipp.”

Jim winced and held his mop close like a weapon. “I don’t want to hear about monsters.”

Ozzie shook her head. “No, I suppose no one does. Not even me.” She paused and forced herself to brighten up. “What can I do to help you, Jim?”

The freedman went back to mopping. “I’m almost done here, Miss Ozzie. Just need a towel for wiping up.”

“I’ll fetch one for you, Jim.”

“Thank you, miss.”

Ozzie padded down the hall toward the laundry in the staff hall behind the main desk. All around the desk, the first thing visitors saw when they arrived, were bronze plaques commemorating wealthy donors. The Jaceys’ plaque was third from the left. It usually brought a warm feeling to her heart, but today she couldn’t see it. Visions of monsters crept from the back of her mind as she went. She had to shake her head over and over to chase them out. Most patients were easy enough to care for: just treat them pleasantly, and they would usually treat her as pleasantly in return. Some of them would be anxious, but who didn’t feel anxious from time to time? It was all about not letting that anxiety control a life.

She shivered. Maybe she would take a long stroll and try to forget about stories of monsters. At least now she could focus on getting a towel and finding a new apron for herself.

Ozzie crossed the front desk, where Jack Rodgers, the big orderly with his long beard, read a newspaper that had come in with the morning mail. The headline “Train Wreck” caught her eye, and she paused.

Leaning over the countertop as quietly as she could not to disturb the orderly, Ozzie skimmed the front page of the Bastrop Daily Star, editor Thomas Husk. Apparently the new patient hadn’t been lying about the train wreck last night in Bayou Bartholomew. It said the lone survivor was the train’s fireman, Nate Kemp.

Her eyes went wide, and she blurted, “Nathan Kemp!”

Jack jumped in fright. The newspaper went into the air and scattered like a loosened feather pillow. He shouted and took several gasps of breath. “Ozera! You scared the life out of me!”

“Sorry, I just read that article…,” Ozzie told him. “Where did it go?”

She threw herself to her knees and went through the pages. Her fingers turned black with ink smudges as she found it again. Just like Kemp had said, the article described him as being wounded on the shoulder. It didn’t mention anything about monsters.

Ozzie settled back into sitting with her legs folded. The patient could have read the article and used it to create a cover story. He could have even given the false name of “Kemp.” Unless…

Ozzie leaped to her feet and asked, “When did this paper come in?”

The orderly, leaning back in his chair with a hand over his heart, was still panting.

“When?” Ozzie repeated.

“It came with the mail,” he said. “It was late today, on account of the trains running west being delayed from the crash.”

“When?” Ozzie asked once more.

“About nine o’clock!”

“And the new patient? Mr. Kemp. When did he arrive?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Early.”

“When?” Ozzie said again, but she was tired of asking. She dashed around the desk and pulled out the huge ledger used for checking in patients. It landed with a thud on the wooden desktop. Her ink-stained fingers left marks as she hurried through the pages.

The farmers had committed him just a few minutes after seven o’clock. They had come from the east, meaning they were farther off the rail line at Oak Grove. Unless Kemp had somehow gotten an advance copy of the day’s news in the middle of a farmer’s pigpen, it was impossible for him to have seen it.

“He told the truth,” Ozzie whispered. She looked up at the orderly and half-shrieked, “He’s telling the truth!”

The orderly stared at her with a gaping mouth.

A tremor ran down Ozzie’s spine. She had worked long and hard to take everything patients said with a grain of salt. Disbelieving stories of monsters should have been easy enough, but she could not shake the stories from Flipp…

Weatherford, she corrected herself. He had been telling the truth, too. The one who had been lying this whole time was the Rail Agency.

There really was something horrifying going on in Gloriana. Ozzie didn’t know what was causing it or how it could even be true, yet monsters were real. She wanted to crawl under the desk and hide like she did from storms when she was a little girl.

Ozzie fought the feeling. She had to overcome fear; it would only slow her down. She had become a nurse to help people, and now the whole state needed help. She shivered. What could she even do?

The doors to the entry burst open. A mustached man in a black hat with a long black coat strode in with heavy footfalls. Two masked men in brown hats and coats followed after him.

“My name is Rail Marshal William Ticks,” the man with the mustache announced. “I believe you may have found my escaped prisoner.”

Chapter Fourteen

Tom Husk leaned against the tree to find the coolest part of the shade as much as he did to give himself cover as he pulled his gun out. It was in the hidden inside pocket of his gray, cotton jacket. The Gloriana June was warm, and the languid humidity made the air cling to him like a wet rag at the barbershop. It hadn’t been so bad beside the river where cool water chilled the breeze, but the brick streets of town baked anything that moved over them. It wasn’t even noon yet.

People were beginning to wrap up their business for the morning. A few buggies went down Main Street, but mostly people walked in the shade on the wide wooden decks of the storefronts. It had been bustling with wagons earlier in the day, but by now all of the heavy moving was done, the ice and milk delivered, and the horses would be back in the cool of their stables. Many of the shops would close for lunch in a few minutes, take a few hours’ break, and then turn back to work that afternoon.

“What work you could get done in this heat,” Husk muttered to himself.

He looked out around the corner where his tree stood. No one seemed to pay him any notice. After a handsome couple walked past him under the lady’s parasol, he turned his attention to the gun.

It was a revolver, one of the latest advancements in centuries of firearms. Catalyst-powered manufacturing had done wonderful things for every industry, churning out cheap goods for everyone to pick up. Most people still had their grandfather’s musket in some corner of their house, but anyone who did any hunting had a good rifle. Factories in Lake Providence were churning out caps and balls by the tens of thousands. It was amazing anything in the state was still alive.

Husk’s gun of choice was the grape shot revolver made by Jean Alexandre LeMat. He had run across its announcement in a New Orleans newspaper when the patent came out earlier that year, and he had special ordered it through Lake Providence even though it cost more than a year’s worth of news ink. Most people liked their six-round Colts for defense, but Husk decided that, if he got into a situation where six shots were needed, he might as well go for the nine that LeMat offered. Underneath the .42 caliber pistol barrel, there was the stubby central 20 gauge smooth-bore barrel that no Colt offered. If somebody got close enough that .42 calibers weren’t enough, Husk could unleash a blast of buckshot that would probably take them both off their feet. At least he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of it.

Husk carefully slipped the caps and balls from the hidden pocket on the other side of his coat and filled eight of the chambers. He always left the main chambers empty just in case the safety was bumped in a tussle. During and after the hail of eight shots, he’d be running as fast as his legs could carry him. If it were a spot where he couldn’t run, he’d load up the grapeshot and reload the rest. Or so he daydreamed.

He had never been in a real fight, even though he joined up with the Navy when war broke out with Mexico ten years before. He fired a hundred or more rounds during his training, but he had been stationed on a supply ship running to and fro between New Orleans and Vera Cruz. There had been incredible battles in the ports of Metamoros and Tampico, and he had missed every one of them. The only times he had seen the enormous guns erupt with flashes of fire and deafening thunder were target practice and the celebration when the war was over.

Husk had to laugh at himself. He wanted so desperately to get to the action that he’d rushed off from his job at the printer to join the ships, thinking they’d get there faster. They did, though Husk was aboard the wooden cargo ships after the fact instead of the iron-clad behemoths that led the charge. Most of the action was on land anyhow, where metal-plated bullwagons rolled, belching out their huge plumes from catalyst-driven furnaces and destroying everything in their slow paths until Santa Anna got wise and dug trenches. Those didn’t stop the airships as they let loose showers of flaming oil over the desert.

It would have been a sight to behold. Husk had seen the sketches and paintings of huge war-balloons floating amid the stormy smoke with bulls snapping wooden barricades like twigs and crushing bricks to powder. Mexican soldiers in their splendorous uniforms ran with looks of terror on their faces. Some peace-loving artists went as far as to show children and women clutching swaddled babies fleeing, blinded by the tears in their own eyes.

Husk cringed. Maybe he was glad he didn’t see it after all.

He slipped his loaded gun and the spare caps back into his hidden pockets. Checking around once more, he found himself alone. Shreveport had been largely quiet with most folks staying inside. The few outdoors had been walking in groups at a hurried pace.

Husk paused and thought back over the morning. He hadn’t seen anyone alone. Even the iceman had two helpers, one holding the horse and the other seemingly on watch while they made their deliveries. Something really was wrong.

The city bell on the square chimed out a tune for the third quarter of the hour. The old man had told him to be at the lumberyard at high noon, but Husk thought he might try to be a little early. If he were going to continue his story, he needed to find a little more about the setting.

Shreveport was known for its lumber. Trains full of iron ore passed through from Texas to be blasted by anthracite coal from Fort Smith in catalyst-laced furnaces in Lake Providence, but the best wood in Gloriana came from Shreveport. Wagons went out every morning into the tall forests and brought back loads of shorn trunks to be sliced up in the steam-powered sawmills. More was floated down the bayous to the mills on shore. Even the bad wood was chopped into mulch and sent downriver to the paper factories, where the stink of processed pulp kept all but the poorest folks from living nearby.

Husk ambled calmly into the wide gate in the tall fence that surrounded the city lumberyard. The air was filled with the spicy sweetness of fresh-cut lumber. Raw trunks were stacked by the kind in piles taller than him. The cranes rested in the noonday sun, their rusty metal engines looking hot enough to boil water even without the furnace underneath them. His ears buzzed with the never-ending noise of the saw blades from the other end of the yard.

Men were milling around among the stacks of lumber. Husk imagined they were crews that had just come off shift, but his mind changed when he saw the first man with a rifle tucked under his arm. Others were holding pistols, a few old muskets, and one had a long, boar-hunting spear with its offset tine. Nearly everyone had hunting knives and machetes at their sides.

The old man from the river had been vague about the lumberyard. Husk had expected a little trouble, but not three dozen men armed to the teeth. Even the curiosity of a newspaperman wasn’t enough to get him mixed up in a mob. Husk put his hands in his pockets and turned back toward the gate.

“Hey!” a voice called behind him.

Husk kept walking and started whistling.

“Hey, you!”

He hastened his step, but a hand grabbed his shoulder mid-stride. Husk’s eyes went wide and allowed his whistle to turn to a screech.

The hand flipped him around. Two men were standing there: one a short, stocky man with bushy eyebrows, and the other a man taller than Husk. He had a long rifle across his shoulders like stocks.

“Oh, hello,” Husk said as calmly as he could.

“I was calling you,” the stocky man said, still reaching up to hold the shoulder of Husk’s coat. His hand was caked with dried mud.

Husk tried to shrug innocently. “Sorry, gents. I guess I thought you were calling somebody else.”

“Haven’t seen you around the yard before,” the man with the long rifle said. “Who’re you, stranger?”

“I’m, uh,” Husk began. He didn’t know what to say. He needed the story before he could work within it. Reluctantly, he decided to go with the truth. “I’m Tom Husk. From Bastrop.”

“What brings you to Shreveport, Tom Husk from Bastrop?” the bushy-eyebrowed man asked.

“I was looking at some lumber, actually,” Husk said, abandoning the truth. “It seemed like you fellas had something else going on, so I decided I might check back later after we’ve all had some lunch.”

The two men exchanged glances. The taller man chewed some chaw without a word. The other nodded.

He turned his bushy face back to Husk. “You’re not planning on running off to the mayor, are you, friend?”

“The mayor?” Husk blurted. He composed himself. It was back to the truth. “Why, no, I had no idea the mayor would have any interest in this. Honestly.”

“Seems mighty coincidental you might wander into the lumberyard right about now and then head off. Got a problem with our little gathering here?”

Husk shook his head as widely as his lanky neck would let him. “I don’t see any problem at all. You’re free men, Americans with the right to assemble peaceably.”

The tall man held up his long rifle. “This looks peaceable to you?”

A lump grew in Husk’s throat. He swallowed against it until he could speak. “Boys, I don’t have two clues to rub together on what you’re doing here, and I don’t care one way or the other about what your mayor thinks about it. I just came in from Bastrop this morning.”

The two men exchanged glances again.

Husk kept his face taut to prevent a grin. He was winning them over. “Mind filling a neighbor in?”

The bushy-eyebrowed man tightened his grip. He said through gritted teeth, “If you really don’t know what’s going on, you shouldn’t be asking. Best you get yourself back on a train to Bastrop before you get hurt.”

Husk couldn’t agree more. He pulled away, and the short man’s grip loosened.

Bells from the town square rang again, chiming out just over the grinding sound of saw-blades on wood. On the twelfth clang, Husk turned back toward town. He didn’t need a story this badly.

The man with the long rifle took two steps and blocked his path. “Hold up.”

Husk gagged on his own dry throat.

“What?” the bushy-eyebrowed man asked.

“Maybe he should stay until the meeting’s done.” The tall man raised an eyebrow and looked cockeyed at Husk. “Even if he ain’t from the mayor, he might talk to somebody we don’t want him talking to just yet.”

“Ah, now I see.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Husk cut in.

“You wait until the meeting’s over, and then we’ll send you on your way,” the tall man said.

The shorter one again caught him by the shoulder. Husk winced, but he didn’t do anything else violent. He just pulled, taking Husk deep into the heart of the lumberyard.

Men were gradually coming together into a central cluster. Most of them were tightlipped, staring off into the distance at nothing or looking down at their boots. Husk caught a few words over the echoing saw-blades.

“I seen it!” one man said in a raspy voice. “Claws draggin’ on the ground, its face all mangled like a stillborn calf.”

“It’s got a shaggy coat, bright red as blood from a fresh wound!”

“It was eight feet tall if an inch!”

“I saw it crawling on all fours across Loneman’s bridge. That’s how it got across McCain Creek.”

“I still think it was just a bear.”

“Ever heard of a bear getting into a locomotive?”

A man in a long, alligator coat climbed on top of a pile of cedar. The voices died down as everyone turned to him. He spoke loudly, clearly, even over the roar of the sawmill. “All right, boys. You know me, and you know I ain’t a lying man.”

Husk squinted his eyes, trying to recognize the man. Something about him seemed familiar, and he kicked himself when he realized it: Two years ago, there had been a photograph of a record-sized alligator caught by Vincent Pike. He stood beside the monstrous creature, hung by its tail from a crane. Pike commanded respect even silent and frozen in the image with his hand upon the gator’s shoulder.

Now his long hair, blond as the midday sun, was tied back and his voice bold. “There’s something out in those woods. I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve seen what it’s done. Whole trees have been turned over. Three chicken coops have been broken open. O’Reilly’s barn’s been smashed, and his herd of pigs wiped out.”

“What do you think it is, Vincent?” someone from the left side.

A shout came from the right. “It’s a monster!”

Several more cries erupted from the crowd.

Husk looked all around him. There wasn’t anyone among them who had a shop downtown or worked in an upstairs office with their starched, white collars. These men were all taken from the edge of town, lumberjacks who frequented the woods and humble farmers who tried to eke out a living in the bayous. A few had on the gray coveralls of workers in the mills.

“Quiet!” the man in the alligator coat called. The voices settled, and Vincent Pike continued, “Whatever the hell it is, we know it’s a force of destruction that’s been killing anything it’s come across. We’re lucky it hasn’t gotten any people yet, but it’s just a matter of time before it turns on a homestead. I’m going after it. Who’s with me?”

A cry rang out from the crowd.

Then a gunshot went off.

Everyone in the crowd ducked at the same time. Husk had his hands over his head before he knew he had surrendered. He peeked over the stocky man with the eyebrows behind him toward the shot.