Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

Mitch closes his eyes for just a second. He tries to move, but can’t. He hears the October Boy’s whiskbroom footsteps, and for him that’s the only sound in the world. There’s nothing else out there in the night. Bud is gone. Charlie’s dead at the side of the road; he’ll never make another sound.

Those last two realizations get Mitch moving. He grabs the pitchfork handle and yanks. The spike exits foot and leg in an electric jolt of pain. If he can use the fork to stand up, that’s a start. The Chrysler’s right behind him. If he makes it onto his feet, he can lean against the hood, maybe balance that way, maybe even manage to defend himself and —

The October Boy tears the pitchfork out of Mitch’s hands. He cracks the pommel of the butcher knife against Mitch’s jaw. Again, Crenshaw goes down hard, his spine ratcheting against the Chrysler’s front bumper as his ass finds its blacktop destination. The Boy squats in front of him, his eyes still blazing with that mutant fire Mitch can’t even comprehend, and the blade of the butcher knife comes up and fills the space between their faces, and the October Boy’s carved mouth chews over a single word.

“Keys.”

It takes a second for the word to register in Mitch’s brain, and then he digs his car keys out of his pocket and hands them over. The October Boy’s fingers vine around them like they’re a fistful of sunshine, and he stands and walks around the side of the Chrysler, and the driver’s door creaks open.

“You’d better move,” the October Boy says. “You’re in my way.”

The car door slams. The engine starts. The front bumper rattles Mitch’s backbone. Jesus Christ, but Mitch moves then, away from that thresher of a bumper, out of the path of those brutal Firestones.

He’s crawling across blacktop as the October Boy hits the gas. The stink of burning rubber fills the air. Mitch rolls down the embankment into the muddy ditch at the side of the road. An exhaust cloud follows him, settling low to the ground. Mitch lies there in the darkness. He doesn’t look up. The Chrysler growls in the night. A wind rises, sowing through the corn as if chasing the big black machine, digging its way down the drainage ditch. Hamburger wrappers churn under its breath, but it doesn’t last long.

And then it’s quiet.

The stars shine down. The wind doesn’t even whisper.

For a time. For a little while.

And then somewhere further down the ditch, a frog starts up. It’s the first frog Mitch has heard all night. He’s forgotten that there are frogs out here. And then another joins in… and another… and another… and it turns out Mitch isn’t alone in the darkness. There are frogs all around him in that muddy old ditch. They were right here all along, clinging to the shadows like a silent audience — dozens of them, maybe even a hundred — and Mitch didn’t know they were here at all, because they were smart enough to be quiet… smart enough to keep their little yaps shut when a two-legged legend came walking down the road….

Mitch buries his face in his hands, listening to those frogs work over the silence. Yeah… they’re sure talking now, he thinks, and then he laughs, because it really is kind of funny.

They don’t waste any time running their mouths once their little green asses are safe.

Not when they’ve got something to talk about.

Not when they’re telling a story….

Of course, the story told by Mitch Crenshaw’s amphibian friends is one the October Boy won’t hear. He’s already blown a couple miles down the black road, and he’s concentrating hard, because driving isn’t easy for him. His viny fingers cling too tightly to the steering wheel, and his severed-root feet are spongy on the gas and the brake. But he does all right, and in a few minutes he crosses the Line into town.

Kids are everywhere, running in packs with bows and arrows, and axe handles, and scythes sharpened for a single night’s work. They’re waiting for his grand arrival in the most obvious places, shadowing the city limits for the first sign of a thing that doesn’t move like a man. So he jams the Chrysler’s horn and guns through the first bunch of teenagers just as he hits Main Street, and they get out of his way double-quick because there’s not much more they can do when a couple tons of steel growls at them like a king-size tomcat that’s seriously pissed off.

Sure they move, but they don’t scare easy. The October Boy’s about fifty feet down Main when a rock hits the Chrysler’s trunk. “Screw you, Crenshaw!” some guy shouts. “Get your chickenshit ass out of that car and onto the street!” And the Boy’s carved grin stretches wide as he hears those words, because they mean things are going to work out better than he ever could have imagined. No way he could have crossed the Line this easily if he’d come into town on his own two legs. But no one recognizes him in Crenshaw’s car, and that means he’s got a chance of running his game all the way to the finish line.

How much of a chance, he’s not exactly sure. There’s a lot more to winning this game than just crossing the Line. And sure, his final destination is in sight — there’s the old brick church, dead ahead. That’s the place that spells ollie ollie oxen free for the October Boy, and if he gets there before midnight the game will end differently than it ever has before. But getting there won’t be easy, because this is definitely one case where the shortest distance between two points isn’t a straight line.

Seen in the bright light of an autumn afternoon, the brick church is the color of faded roses, but by moonlight those bricks are as ugly as old scars. Already, a few young men have gathered on the lawn beneath the narrow arched windows, and at least five guys are sitting on the steps leading up to the church door. They’re playing a different set of odds than the guys running the streets. They’re counting on the October Boy making it all the way to the church in one piece. After all, the church is the Boy’s only predictable destination.

And that bet makes one thing a sure deal — the October Boy won’t try to make it just yet. Right now, that would be suicide, and the Boy knows it… just as he knows he’s going to have to find a safe place to think things over and come up with a plan. So he hangs a left turn and heads down a side street, flicking his lights on to high beam so it’ll be tougher for anyone facing the Chrysler head-on to spot a pumpkin-headed driver sitting behind the wheel —

“Goddamn! It’s Mitch Crenshaw’s heap! Get outta the way!”

A dozen kids scatter as the Chrysler approaches. The guys in the first group wear dime-store monster masks. The ones in the second don’t need masks at all — their pale, washed-out faces are scary enough, five days of hunger etched in the hollow spaces along with just enough chiseled insanity to send a shiver up the October Boy’s gnarled spine.

Both gangs disappear into the shadows as the Chrysler blows by. It’s no surprise that this kid Crenshaw has a hell of a rep. So does his car. That’s just fine with the October Boy. If Crenshaw’s rod is the steel equivalent of his own personal monster mask, he’ll be happy to let it scare anyone who gets in his way.

He makes a couple more turns, working his way east, following back streets to the edge of the downtown section. Then he hangs a left on Oak Street and heads north, cruising by the market. The ham-fisted butcher stands guard out front, armed with a shotgun. That’s the way it is all over town, any place that has food. The diner, the truck stop, the liquor store out by the highway — they all have guards posted. The powers-that-be want that five-day hunger scrabbling around inside every young man who’s out for the Run. The only way anyone’s eating tonight is if they spill the candy locked up in the October Boy’s guts.