Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

“I don’t know nothing, you black sonofabitch,” the man whined.

Eb hurdled the counter and dropped down beside the cringing wreck. He punched the man in the face, quite hard. The man squawked.

“There’s more where that came from,” Eb promised.

Blood poured out of the man’s nostrils and bubbled over his lips.

“You mentioned a track machine.”

“Wh-what?” the man blubbered.

“A track machine, you called it. Some kind of retrofitted tank.”

The man bared his teeth… then dropped his eyes and nodded.

“Where can I find it?”

“Why the hell would you go back?” the man said. “You got away, crafty prick.”

Ebenezer restrained the impulse to pummel the man into unconsciousness.

“An address, please. And if you call the police after I leave, rest assured I will come back and slit your throat before they take me to jail. Are we understood?”

“Yeah… understood.”

“Good. That wrist will heal up fine. You will be up and grease-monkeying again before you can say Jack Robinson.”

THE TRACK MACHINEsat in the yard of a farmhouse along the western flank of Grinder’s Switch. Eb parked a ways down the road and approached on foot.

It was an honest-to-goodness World War II tank, the M2A1 or perhaps the M3, stripped to the treads. A bed had been installed over its back end, same as on a pickup truck, with wood-slat sidings all around. The cab of a Ford pickup had been chopped down and welded to the front end.

Ebenezer slunk through the long grass, climbed the treads, and stole a look through the driver-side window. The interior looked nearly the same as any truck, except instead of a wheel, a pair of steel steering rods protruded from the floor. The original roof had been removed and a zippered flap installed, turning it into a convertible of sorts. It even had an automatic transmission.

Ebenezer glanced at the farmhouse. The kitchen light was burning. This wouldn’t be your garden-variety thievery. He would need a few minutes to figure out how the track machine drove, which meant he could count on a visit from its owner. He tried the driver’s door. Unlocked. God bless the trusting rubes who populated this scratch-ass town. He slid into the cab. Gas and brake pedals, same as a car. There was no wheel, which meant no steering collar, which was what he would normally break open to access the ignition wires for a hot-wire job.

He flipped down the visor. A pair of keys fell into his lap. People were stupid, hallelujah.

The ignition switch was located under the seat, between his legs. He slid the key in. The machine rumbled to life. The enormous engine sent a shiver through his body. He popped the manual brake and pressed his foot on the gas pedal. Nothing. He frowned and tried the brake pedal. The machine trundled forward. So the brake and gas were reversed. Good to know.

He pulled the rod on his left side. The rod on his right shifted forward automatically. The machine turned on its axis until it was pointed at the farmhouse. He caught frantic movement behind the drapes.

He swung the machine around and set off in the direction of the Oldsmobile. The tank rampaged across the yard. The left tread hit an ornamental rock at the edge of the driveway; the machine tilted, throwing Eb against the driver’s door as it scraped over the rock, and hammered back down.

“Oh, I like this!”

He pulled up beside the Olds. When he hopped out, he saw someone running across the field. Next he caught a flash of something streaking across the ground toward him, much closer. He managed to scramble back into the cab the instant before a dog hurled itself against the door, growling and slavering.

Eb pulled a pistol from his waistband. He could see the owner of both the dog and the machine drawing near. The man was carrying a pitchfork. Who did he think was stealing his property, Frankenstein’s monster?

“Get after ’im, Pepper!” Eb heard the man shout. “Tear his trespassin’ ass a new one!”

Eb unrolled the window a few inches. He slid the barrel of the pistol through the gap and angled it at the leaping dog. The owner froze.

“You wouldn’t—”

“Oh, but I would,” Eb said. “Unless you bring it to heel.”

The man whistled sharply. The dog immediately quieted down.

“You just stay calm, Mister,” the man said.

Ebenezer shut the machine off and hopped out. The man could have been forty but looked much older, his face prematurely ruined by drink or too much sun or simply life in Grinder’s Switch. Either way, he seemed to be taking the theft of his machine with good grace. That probably had something to do with the gun pointed at his face.

“I just paid that sucker off,” he said. “You wouldn’t go stealing it from me, now would you?”

His appeal to Ebenezer’s better nature was uplifting, if completely misplaced.

“I will be taking it,” Eb said. “But I’ll bring it back, as I have no use for this kind of contraption in my day-to-day life—and if I don’t return with it, you can come find it in or around Little Heaven. You know where that is, don’t you?”

The man scuffed his toes in the dirt. “Guess I do, sure.”

“Those people helped pay this great walloping beast off, didn’t they?”

“You could say.”

“I’m going to toss my equipment in,” Eb said. “Then I’ll be off. If you and Chopper there play nice, I won’t have to shoot you.”

The man jabbed his pitchfork into the lawn. “We’ll be plenty nice, Mister. And her name’s Pepper. Goddamn it.”

Eb hurled the guns and flamethrower into the bed of the track machine. The gormless man and his dog observed with matching expressions of tight-lipped impotence—Eb wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the dog, but it did look quite pissed.

“You planning on starting World War Three?”

Eb gave the man a look. “How many times have you been to Little Heaven?”

The man shrugged. “Four, maybe five.”

“When was your last visit?”

“Month ago, coulda been.”

“Did you ever find anything strange about the place?”

The man appeared to seriously consider this. “They take their faith a little too sincerely, you ask me. Me and my wife go to church on Sundays, and Maggie—that’s my wife—she bakes vanilla squares for the annual bake sale. But if someone said to me, Hey, Arnie, guess what? God needs you to live in the middle of the woods as a test of faith … Mister, I don’t think the Lord much cares where we practice our faith.”

Eb nodded. “You seem a decent bloke. Steer clear of the place.”

Ebenezer clambered into the cab. He popped the manual brake, and the machine thundered off toward the trail leading to Little Heaven.

LITTLE HEAVEN’S COOK,an old shipwreck named Tom Guthrie, was the first to start choking. His face went pink, then brightened to red as he clutched at his throat. The chapel quickly filled with the sound of hoarse gasps and the frenetic swinging of limbs. By the time Guthrie started coughing up blood, the rest of the adult congregants were either in paroxysms of their own or staggering around wide-eyed as their throats closed up to pinholes.

Seeing it, Amos was relieved to note that he had selected correctly. He had considered weed killer, but had ultimately settled on drain cleaner. A wise choice, it turned out.

Ammate Weed Killer, by Du Pont. Better things for better living… through CHEMISTRY! read the tagline on its label. Effective against poison oak, sumac, and ivy. Charlie Fairweather had suggested they buy a drum of the stuff; better to douse the grounds than have the kids scratching themselves crazy and having to run back to civilization for tubes of calamine lotion. Amos had snuck into the equipment shed yesterday and read the ingredients on the drum carefully. Ammonium sulfamate was the active chemical. My, that sure sounded dangerous. He put a handful of the coarse white crystals in a paper sack and took it to the kitchen, where he mixed it with sugared water. It sent up a powerful smell. He was unsure they would drink it, even with the sugared-wine overlay. He cut a potato in half and doused its weeping flesh with the sugary weed killer. The reaction was mild, only a faint sputtering. That probably wouldn’t do.