Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

“Damn right I did. And I won’t lie about it, either.”

“Fair enough. You did that job. Now let’s do another.”

“What are you talking about?”

Pete drops Riley Blake’s feet in the gutter and nods in the Boy’s direction. “I mean, I don’t think our friend here’s going to make it anywhere on his own.”

“Whatever plan you’ve got, I hope it’s not complicated… we have about five minutes between now and midnight.”

“We’ll keep it simple, then.”

Pete bends low, ducks his head under the Boy’s right arm, sets him on his feet.

“Okay,” Pete says. “Let’s get him to the church on time.”

Ricks can’t believe he hasn’t heard a shot yet, and that can only mean one of two things — either the Boy was creamed in the accident, or the dipshit he sent to pull the trigger is dragging ass.

Well, hell, Ricks tells himself. Maybe it’s time for Mother to go hold the little moron’s hand. He slides across the passenger seat and makes it out of the car. Stands up, but nearly doesn’t stay up, so he grabs the top of the car door to steady himself.

That’s when he sees the goddamn football player over there on the ground, laid out like he’s ready for flowers. And there’s another kid. Two of them, actually. A boy and a girl, and both of them are on their feet and moving. The boy has Sawtooth Jack slung over his shoulder like a wounded soldier. He’s dragging him in the direction of the church while the girl brings up the rear, watching the shadows for trouble.

Ricks can’t believe his eyes. He blinks, but it doesn’t do any good. Forget bullets that look like trout and all that other screwy horseshit — this is the worst nightmare he can imagine. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

“Hey…” he shouts. “Hey!”

The girl glances in his direction, but she doesn’t slow down at all, and neither does the boy.

Ricks suddenly recognizes both of them.

Jesus! Kelly Haines and Pete McCormick. Just my goddamn luck!

He reaches for his holster… and finds it empty.

And why’s that, Jerry?

Well… maybe it’s because you gave your pistol to the kid.

And you gave your riot gun to Dan Shepard.

All you’ve got is a fucking nightstick.

And it’s three minutes to midnight, you stupid sack of shit.

So get your ass moving….

Pete and Kelly don’t run. The October Boy can’t.

But they move.

Kelly turns her back on Jerry Ricks, and that’s a relief. The pissed-off cop looks like he shaved with a cheese grater. He wasn’t any picnic before he looked like he’d been skinned alive. She sure doesn’t want a piece of him now.

Kelly’s still not in top form herself, but she pulls even with Pete.

“You’d better hurry,” she says.

Pete’s breaths come hard and fast. “Doing the best I can.”

And that’s what Ricks is doing, too, because the clock is short another half-minute, leaving two and a half until the final bell.

His.38’s on the ground by the wrecked Chrysler. Ricks snatches it up. Glances over at the three figures heading toward the church while he does that, and the whole deal’s making sense to him now. Ricks doesn’t need a round of interrogation to figure out that Haines and McCormick have managed to add two and two together when it comes to figuring out the grand scheme of things… and they’ve managed that feat at the worst possible moment.

See, Jerry’s long-barreled Smith & Wesson won’t do him any good. He can’t fire the pistol. He can’t risk taking a shot at McCormick, because he might nail the Boy instead. And if he blows a hole through Mr. Pumpkinhead, the whole goddamn deal will go straight to hell.

Has to be a kid nails that walking nightmare.

And it has to happen in the next two minutes.

Those are the rules.

Jerry looks around. There’s no one in sight.

Except that one damn football player. Flat-assed on his back. Over there in the gutter….

They’re halfway up the church stairs when Pete loses his grip on the Boy. As he lurches to the side, Pete makes a grab for his denim jacket and misses. Just when he’s ready for the sound of pumpkin splattering against brick staircase, Kelly catches the Boy by his frayed collar.

Together they haul Jim Shepard onto the tangled vines that pass for his feet.

“Okay,” Pete says. “I’ve got him now.”

Kelly takes the stairs two by two.

“I hope that door isn’t locked,” she says.

The kid says, “They’re a long way off. I don’t know if I can — ”

“Shut up and do it,” Ricks says. “You’ve got six shots. Make one of them count.”

The kid takes aim.

The bell in the church steeple begins to toll the hour.

“Pull the trigger, idiot! Do it now!”

Three bullets chew at the door just as Kelly throws it open. She ducks inside. Two more shots ring out as Pete and the Boy stumble past her.

Kelly heaves the door shut and sets the lock.

She turns, her eyes searching the darkness.

“Pete?” she asks. “Are you all right?”

There’s no answer. It’s as if she’s speaking to the shadows.

The bell tolls.

For the ninth time… the tenth… the eleventh….

The bell tolls midnight.

Ricks says: “Give me the pistol.”

“I think I hit him,” Riley says, handing over the.38. “I’m pretty sure that last shot — ”

“Uh-uh. You didn’t hit shit, kid. Unless you want to count that church door. You hit that thing five fucking times. But don’t worry about it. At least you did one thing right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You pulled the trigger five times. That means you left one bullet in the gun. And being as it’s past midnight, there’s one place I’d really like to put it.”

“Huh?”

Ricks smiles. Jesus. This kid really is a spud with a pretty thick jacket.

He jams the.38 under Riley Blake’s chin.

He pulls the trigger.

Two hundred and thirty pounds of useless hits the ground.

Kelly grips Pete’s hand in the darkness. “Thank God you’re okay. Those last two shots when you were coming through the door — I thought you might have been hit.”

“No,” Pete says. “I’m still on my feet. Looks like he is, too.”

Ahead of them, the October Boy walks slowly down the aisle. He’s unsteady but holding on, his left hand catching the endcaps of oak pews as he advances from one row to the next. Ribbons of moonlight spill through narrow stained-glass windows, falling like bars across his path. They’re the color of blood and bruises, and the Boy wades through them, his battered head dipping on that braided-vine neck, light from the lightning-bolt crack flashing through the stained murk like a yellow knife.

Pete watches, not quite trusting his own eyes.

It’s past midnight, and the October Boy is still on his feet.

It’s past midnight, and the October Boy is inside the church.

He’s won.

Six hours ago, Pete never could have imagined that he’d be standing in this place, silently celebrating the Boy’s victory. It’s a strange moment, because Pete knows he made that victory possible. Just a few hours ago he was intent on killing the thing that’s walking down the aisle on scarecrow legs, and now he’d run to help the Boy if he stumbled.

But the October Boy doesn’t stumble. He moves forward with head bowed, approaching an icon this town abandoned long ago. Pete stares at the big cross nailed up there on the wall. That thing has never meant much to him. He sat beneath it on a thousand Sunday mornings he can’t recall. He sat beneath it on one day — the day of his mother’s funeral — that he’ll never forget. He knows what the cross is supposed to mean, and there’s a part of him that would like to think that maybe it could mean those things — in another place, to other people. But not here, not to him, and not to a boy who ended up on his knees in a cornfield with a gun pressed against his head while an entire town turned its back.