Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

Not that he could, the way he’s feeling. Cut up, cracked up, his body hammered straight through. As for his face, must be that the glass sliced him up when the side window broke. Could even be that his head did the job on the window.

Things start to swim as he tries to remember. It’s weird. He’s trying to recall the accident, when he knows he should be thinking of something else… something that’s important….

Ricks blinks again. Kicks his own ass out of dreamland.

Yeah. There’s the world. The one he needs to grab hold of. It’s clear… and sharp —

“Are you all right?” the kid says.

Jesus. Ricks forgot the kid was there. Apart from his busted-up nose — which the kid had before the accident — he looks all right. He’s even got Ricks’s pistol in his hand and —

The October Boy, Ricks thinks. Sure. That’s the important thing he couldn’t quite remember. Where’s the goddamn Boy?

He looks to the road. The Chrysler never made that turn onto Main. It’s upside down, bashed in, finished. Ricks reaches across the kid, gets the glove compartment open. It feels like his head is going to roll off his shoulders when he does that. As he grabs a box of cartridges, he’s praying that the Boy isn’t as finished as that fucking Chrysler looks. Because if the Boy’s done, and if Ricks’s Dodge did the job instead of one of the kid’s bullets, then it’s all over.

For everything that’s penned up in the city limits, anyway.

Finished. Done. End of story.

But maybe it isn’t that way. Maybe the Boy’s still sucking wind. If that’s the deal, then the town — and everyone in it — still stands a chance.

Ricks glances at his watch. It’s 11:45. Still plenty of time to get the job done. He spills bullets into his hand. They’re out of focus. Blood drips on them from the wounds in his head. For a second it looks like he’s got a handful of fresh-spawned trout taking a bath in his blood.

Whoa, boy. Don’t go swimming in those waters.

Ricks closes his eyes, shakes his head. He doesn’t have time for this addle-brained shit. When he opens his eyes, the fish are gone. The bullets are back. He hands them to the kid, but the moron just sits there, staring at them.

Ricks doesn’t bother to look at him. Instead he sits there for a long moment, waiting for the sound of the opening door, hoping the kid will get a clue on his own.

Things get kind of shadowy for a while. Maybe ten seconds. Maybe fifteen.

“If you want to finish this job,” Ricks says, “you’d better get your ass moving.”

Ricks turns to the kid, just to make sure he got the message.

But the car door is open.

The kid is already gone.

Riley Blake swallows hard.

Man oh man. He never thought he’d win the Run.

He walks down Main Street, the cop’s pistol gripped tightly in his hand. Behind him, to the north, the three fires crawling through the poor side of town have become one roaring inferno. But fire isn’t Riley’s problem. He can’t think about it now. There’s only one thing on his mind, and it’s over there inside Mitch Crenshaw’s bashed Chrysler.

Riley hopes that thing isn’t dead.

It better not be dead.

Because Riley Blake’s got dibs on its homegrown ass. Uh-huh. It’s ten minutes to midnight, and the October Boy is all his. There’s no one else around. No competition … and that means no sweat . Twenty steps… maybe twenty-five… and Riley will be right there at that Chrysler.

He keeps walking, loading bullets into Ricks’s.38 as he goes. He feeds the pistol six, then slaps the cylinder closed. He tries to tell himself that the hacked-up bastard back there in the prowl car wouldn’t give this job a second thought, but he knows he’s nothing like Jerry Ricks.

And he doesn’t have to be. Ten minutes is plenty of time to do the job and still be careful about it. And that’s probably a very good idea, because Riley knows all about the thing over there in that wreck. Call it the October Boy… or Ol’ Hacksaw Face… or Sawtooth Jack… it’s a thing that goes by a dozen other names, a monster that can conjure a year’s worth of nightmares in a heartbeat.

That’s why Riley takes it slow….

That’s why Riley takes it easy….

Ten feet away from the wreck, he kneels and peeks inside the cab. Something’s moving in there, bucking against the hood of the car like some sadist wired it to the Chrysler’s battery. The sight rattles Riley just a little bit, but he steadies his nerve, tells himself that moving is good . Moving means the thing is still alive.

Riley raises the pistol and takes aim. Just as he begins to think this is going to be really easy, the thing in the Chrysler rolls over…

… and drops on its elbows…

… and starts crawling.

Not fast, but not at all slow, either. As it moves, one of its hands flexes open. Something feeds through the vines of its left wrist, extending into the thing’s grasp like a mutant cat’s claw. It’s a butcher knife, and it gleams in the firelight spilling over Riley’s shoulder, and the October Boy’s fingers close around it as he raises his carved-up head and stares straight at the boy with the gun.

Jolts of wild lightning jag through the thing’s head. It’s like watching an electrical storm. Something about it mesmerizes Riley… something about the way the light spills through those triangular eyes. He can’t seem to look away from it; he can’t seem to think. And all the while the pumpkin-headed thing keeps staring at him as it crawls through the busted window, elbowing across the blacktop with that knife in its hand.

And now Riley can smell the monster. Scorched cinnamon, and gunpowder, and melted wax — the stink is all mixed up in the October Boy’s fireball of a head, and that head looks like the devil’s own stewpot on the boil.

The stink shakes Riley out of his reverie.

He raises the pistol… cocks the hammer…

And something smashes against his arm. Hard. Riley drops the.38. He stumbles, grabbing his right biceps as he manages to turn around….

And there’s the girl. That same damn girl. That redhead —

“Miss me?” she asks.

Then she hits him again.

The brakeman’s club cracks against Riley’s skull.

The next thing he sees is pavement coming up fast.

Pete hauls the October Boy away from the wreck. He’s actually glad the Chrysler flipped on its lid. He and Kelly barely dodged it while crossing Main after leaving the movie theater, and that was the third time tonight he was lined up in front of that rolling monster’s headlights. He’s beginning to think the heap has it in for him. And maybe that isn’t a bad idea — because even now the Chrysler isn’t completely dead. Its Gorgon headlights are still blazing, and Pete doesn’t want to get caught in their glow even if the heap’s wheels are pointed skyward.

Pete drags the Boy to the sidewalk. The butcher knife slips out of the Boy’s grasp and clatters against the roadway, but the Boy doesn’t even notice. It seems like the thing that used to be Jim Shepard doesn’t even know what’s going on. He makes no resistance as Pete settles him against a mailbox at the curb.

While Pete’s doing that, Kelly stares down at Riley Blake, the club cocked and ready if he so much as moves.

He doesn’t. He’s out cold.

Pete stops for a second, catching his breath. Then he walks toward Riley, shooting Kelly a glance. “You lowered the boom on this guy twice tonight,” he says, grabbing the football player’s boots and dragging him away from the wrecked car. “I think maybe you enjoyed it a little too much.”