Joe Schreiber - Chasing the dead

She puts Veda down-the girl shrieking in terror as soon as Sue lets her go-and plunges the shovel into the dirt. But the frozen top layer of the ground is as hard as asphalt, and the blade of the shovel bounces off it, the plastic handle vibrating in Sue's palms. Below her Veda immediately grabs Sue's leg and tries to climb up into her arms. Holding her daughter back with her left leg, Sue puts the blade down again and drives it with her right foot.

This time the blade does go in a few inches, the crust of the earth yielding to the force of her attack. She can feel the heart beneath her feet laboring harder with each pulse, wiggling through the shovel's handle and through her palms, and when she looks up again she sees that the children have turned back from the Expedition and are headed down the hill toward her.

Sue thrusts harder, slamming the shovel in, digging up as much as she can and pulling it out again. She starts to sweat and her bangs stick to her forehead. Veda clings to her leg and screams, and Sue tries to put the screams out of her mind. The ground beneath them pulses. The hole at the base of the statue has become a shallow trench, going a foot or two down at its deepest part. As she stares into it, the trench vibrates faster, making crumbs of dirt slide back down.

It's here. I know it is. I can feel it.

When she looks up, Sue sees that the children have surrounded her again. But this time they have stopped, ten paces away, coming no closer. She doesn't question it, just keeps digging, picking the shovel blade up and ramming it down.

Not deep enough.

She plunges it harder, pulls it out, smashes it in again, and the shovel clanks off something solid.

Sue looks in at it, the outer edge of what seems to be an ancient metal box. The box is shaking so hard, pulsating, that the ground around it gapes open visibly with every beat. It looks as if it's going to shake itself loose from the half-frozen ground and burst open any second and Isaac Hamilton's heart will come flying straight out at her.

If I can just get it out, get it out-

She digs the shovel in, putting all her strength into working the edge of the blade under the box, trying to get enough leverage to pry it up. It skips and scrapes off the edge.

"Come on," she says under her breath. "Come on, now. You can do this."

And drives the shovel down, one last time, sinking the blade underneath, forcing the handle up in combination with the box's own shaking, tearing up out of the earth.

Sue hunches over, reaches for the box, curling her fingers beneath its lower edges, and lifts it all the way out of the ground. She can feel it pulsating in her hands, making her arms shake along with it.

What now? What the fuck now?

Behind her there's a soft click of a bolt-action being snapped into place. Sue lowers the metal box and looks back at what the children have been looking at, in their dead and staring way, for the last moment or so.

The Engineer stands on the other side of the statue with his rifle, the flesh of his face stretched into a tight grin. He's holding a cell phone in his right hand, the phone, she knows, that he's been calling her on all night. Sue sees how his overalls are still slashed to pieces where Phillip drove the knife in over and over, all those years ago. Next to him, Phillip's corpse is holding a long knife in front of his face, also grinning. Together they represent the leering face of Isaac Hamilton.

"Thought we'd give you the choice, Susan," Hamilton's voice says through the Engineer's mouth.

"One for you, the other for your daughter," the voice says through Phillip's mouth. It sounds identical to the other voice, the voice on the phone, the voice of Jeff Tatum and Marilyn. It is the last voice that so many children heard over the past two hundred years. "Maybe we should use the knife on the little girl."

Sue moves to pull Veda closer to her, keeping the pounding, vibrating metal box against her side with her other hand. She can hardly hold on to it. "I don't think so," she says.

"What?"

"Not as long as I've got your heart in my hands."

The Engineer shakes his head. "My heart has been locked up for centuries. You can't harm it any more than you can save yourself." He aims the rifle at her face, directly at her eyes. "Hold very still now. You'll be joining us shortly."

"All right." With her right arm Sue lifts Veda up so that the girl's face is next to hers, then raises the shaking box upward so that it's directly in front of them, blocking their eyes. She can actually hear the sound of the heart inside now, pounding the metal interior, an accelerated WHUMP-WHUMP,WHUMP-WHUMP,WHUMP-WHUMP."Fire away."

Don't be stupid. He'll just shoot your legs out. It's over. You know it is.

Sue casts her glance back up the hill, over the congregation of silent children, where the Expedition is on fire. She thinks of the 151 in the trunk and the remaining half-tank of gas.

The Engineer, Phillip, and all the children stare at her, then as one they lift their gazes up the hill to where the mound of snow that had been holding the Expedition in place has melted away in the fire. And as Sue watches, the Expedition shifts free, its exhaust system scraping off whatever's left of the snow beneath it, and begins to roll downhill, flames dancing in its windows, speeding over the shaking ground, a taxi dispatched from the depths of hell.

WHUMP-WHUMP,WHUMP-WHUMP,WHUMP-WHUMPThe children have turned completely around to look-the Expedition is now just fifty feet away, now forty, thirty-and as the Engineer and Phillip start to shift away, Sue tucks the metal box under her left elbow, clutching Veda against her right side, and takes three steps from the base of the statue. On the third step she launches herself as hard as she can, putting everything she has and a little more into her legs. At the same time she swings her arm backward, flinging the box directly into the path of the Expedition.

What happens next transpires as much in her mind's eye as it does in reality. The box strikes the last Isaac Hamilton statue and starts to bounce forward just as the car hits the foundation. In the last flickering instant before impact, Sue sees a brief flash of the box as it disappears between the Expedition's front grille and the statue's base, the top bursting open, its metal dimensions suddenly crushed as unstoppable force meets immovable object, and the black heart within it smashed flat, pulverized between the two.

She looks away.

Somewhere behind her Sue hears the final moments of the collision, imagines what's left of the entire crate of 151 flying forward to slam into the burning backseat. Alcohol igniting, bottles bursting like bombshells inside the Expedition, until with one shrill, earringing blast, the gas tank finally explodes, shooting a tower of orange flame and black smoke straight up into the sky.

Sue raises her head, her hands pressed over Veda's ears as she looks back at the street behind her. The smoke is too thick to see through. It burns her eyes, siphons through her lungs, makes her choke. Lifting Veda up, she carries her away, down toward the waterfront. Somewhere between the street and the harbor she realizes that the sound of the pounding heart has stopped.

They get to the water, the wooden boardwalk leading to a series of docks. The air is clearer here and Sue holds Veda at eye level, the girl no longer screaming, just crying steadily, the intensity of her panic having drained her.

Sue hugs her daughter tightly, as tightly as she dares, kissing away her tears. "Shhh, it's okay," she says. Over Veda's shoulder, Sue can see the smoke rising, catching in the wind and being pulled eastward, out to sea.

And as the air slowly clears, she sees the statue is still there atop its stone pillar, the front end of the wrecked Expedition wrapped around it, burning.