Devon Monk - Tin Swift

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.