Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

Something charged from his left-hand side; he cranked the bars to the right. Micah’s rifle cracked; the thing skip-tumbled away, a good chunk of its anatomy obliterated by the blast—

The tires hit a rut; the bike wobbled, threatening to spill him off, but he recovered and rose up off the seat as the bike launched out of the rut on a bad line. The wheels spun, engine whining, before he slammed back down. His skull hammered the handlebars. He pulled his head up, woozy, seeing stars—he was riding straight at the trees. An abomination loomed out of the woods: the skulls of many animals smashed together, the bone humped and carbuncled like a walnut with a horrible mouth splitting its surface. Ebenezer dropped one leg down and wrenched the bars hard, spinning a tight one-eighty; he gunned the throttle, and the bike reared up as something snagged at his shirt collar, slitting the material and leaving a burning line of pain down his back. He cat-walked the bike away from the trees, shifted his weight to bring the front tire down again, and slewed onto the path. Blood was trickling down his back. He shot past the pickup truck and caught a flash of blood on its windows and a headless body slumped against the tire.

Sweat dripped into his eye; he blinked, and when his vision cleared, he saw something in the firs to his right, forty yards ahead. It kept rising and rising in a crazed mass of limbs like a living totem pole. It slumped forward, falling like a tree but much faster—more like an enormous whip being cracked. It slapped down on the path, sending up a stinking puff of dust, this terrible skinned rope studded with red-rimmed eyes and mouths full of teeth gnashing with mindless hunger—

Eb jerked the handlebars, popping the front wheel up, and hurdled the thing like a speed bump. The tires burred over its body, sending up the stink of burned rubber; for a heart-sinking moment Eb was sure the thing’s teeth or claws would puncture the tire, leaving him to flee on the shredded rim, but the rubber held, thank Christ.

The path widened and ran flat; the shapes between the trees began to thin. He sensed movement from behind, things blundering and crashing through the bush, but he was moving faster than them now.

Ha-haaaaah! he thought joyously. Run, run, just as fast as you can, you can’t catch me—I’m the bloody GINGERBREAD MAN!

A shadow fell across his shoulder. He caught the decayed smell of his pursuer. He glanced back in time to see something swooping in from above. Its plated wings were fanned out, a fearsome ten-foot span of vein-threaded blackness. He swerved to avoid its predatory strike; its wings flapped directly overhead, the air filling with rancid white dust like the powder off a moth. It latched onto his ear; its talons were blunt but incredibly powerful—it was like getting pierced with ballpoint pens. The creature flapped its enormous wings; Eb’s ass lifted a few inches off the seat. He screamed as the thing tried to muscle itself skyward; it raked his head with other claws, these much sharper, slicing his scalp open.

Eb clung desperately to the handlebars as the thing rose up, clutching his ear like an angry schoolmarm. One hand was pried off the bars, his fingers barely holding on; his screams intensified as his panic hit maximum intensity. Then, with a fibrous zippering tear, part of his ear was gone, ripped right off the side of his head. He barely felt it, on account of the adrenaline washing through his system. He dropped back onto the seat; the shocks groaned as the bike bottomed out again, spraying a fan of gravel. There came a pressurized hiss as blood sprayed from the wound, flowing around his jaw and down his neck.

The thing screeched and wheeled through the air in front of him. This huge black thing, part bat and part buzzard and part snake but larger than those creatures by far, with a segmented tail that winnowed to the stinger of a scorpion.

Eb ripped the pistol off the handlebars and fired. The second bullet hit its chest; the thing was blown backward in midair, body crumpling as it crashed into the roadside nettles.

Ebenezer tossed the gun away. This was his chance, maybe his only one. He could hear them behind him, a murderous stampede. He opened the throttle. The bike whined in protest; fingers of black smoke trailed up from the transmission.

Come on , Eb thought desperately. Just a few more miles, little pony.

The path dropped steadily downward. He maneuvered the bike over small dirt moguls and shale slides, laying off the throttle and letting the momentum take hold. Casting a glance back, he saw nothing.

The engine was so hot that it baked the flesh of his calf, but the little Metisse didn’t overheat or conk out. If he made it through this, Ebenezer would never speak ill of the French again. The side of his head throbbed where part of his ear had been wrenched off; he touched the wound and recoiled as blistering pain shot through his skull. Christ Almighty. Well, at least he already wore his hair long. Blood leaked down his forehead from the shallow cuts in his scalp, but he didn’t feel faint yet.

He rode until he hit the creek. Its bottom was covered in water-polished stones as one might find in an ornamental aquarium. He gussied the bike down the banks and into the shallows. Water hissed off the engine. He gingerly nosed it forward. The rear tire stuttered over the smooth stones; the bike slid out from under him, but he was able to hold it up and goose the throttle until the tires caught again. The motor almost cut out at the deepest point, water rising up to the base of the gearbox, but Eb powered it through with a few quick punches on the throttle.

He geared up the far bank and let the bike idle. He wanted to switch it off and let it cool down, but he wasn’t sure it would start again. He was not being pursued, that he could see. He swung the bike around and continued down the road.

At some point, the path bled into a clearing. The grass ran waist-high on either side. In the afternoon sunlight, he could see Ellen’s car parked at the cut.

“Holy shit.” He slapped the side of the bike the way a cowboy might the flanks of a trusty steed. “We made it.”

He was fifty yards from Ellen’s Oldsmobile when the bike’s engine rose to a pained squeal. Smoke poured from the transmission compartment as the gears stripped loose. The bike sputtered once and died. Ebenezer pushed the bike to the car. He laid it down reverentially.

“Thank you,” he said to it. “Thank you so much.”

The car keys were still tucked under the bumper where Micah had stashed them. He slid the key into the lock and sat in the driver’s seat. He gripped the steering wheel. He stared at himself in the rearview mirror. His skin was grayish, a pallor it had never held before. The top quarter of his left ear was gone, blood dried down his neck. He was not fit for human eyes. But he was alive, goddamn it. Alive.

He pumped the gas pedal and cranked the key. The engine caught with a magnificent roar, that eight-barrel engine rumbling. He backed into the tall grass, swung the big car around, and drove away from the cut. He unrolled the window and let the cool air play over his face.

“Free at last, free at last,” he hooted, “good God almighty, free at last!”

“YOU FIGUREthe bastard made it?”

Minerva stood at the fence with Micah. It had been hours since Ebenezer had left.

Micah said, “Think so.”

Minerva was pretty sure he had, too. The devil’s own luck, that prick.

Little Heaven was chilly in the late morning, skies hung with the threat of rain. The compound was quiet. The things in the woods seemed content to remain where they were so long as everyone in Little Heaven stayed put.