Andersonville (27 page)

The clouds gathered like black paint in gray water across the dark sky, and Limber called up to the sentry on the stockade wall to open the gate. There was a brief exchange. Nervous queries to be barked down. Tedious.

Mastemah regarded Limber through Wirz's eyes and so saw the man its host had recruited. One of a pair of twin brothers from a family of circus performers, two souls as close to each other as mortals could be. They had broken their mother's heart together and enlisted, marched side by side against the enemy, then been forever separated in the firestorm of Vicksburg.

A piece, perhaps the better part, of Limber had been torn from him by a fusillade of musket balls, and he had been left hating not only the enemy but himself and all mankind for agreeing to this damn fool thing called war.

This had made him the perfect recruit for Wirz.

The kastiri within Limber, well, kastiri could not be blamed for their weak-mindedness. The tormentor demons had never been angels. They were a soulless slave class born in hell and bred for cruelty first by example. They spawned knowing nothing but unending torture at the hands of their own elder brothers, and they longed only for the time when they could wield the lash themselves. They flayed and ravished human souls, and the best of them were given the privilege of rearing the next generation, for there were always more kastirin to be made as long as mortal souls arrived in their abode.

A kastiri eager to break from its torturous existence wasn't hard to find, but as Mastemah had learned, they were undisciplined.

Soon the wheel of the kastirim would cease its turning, just as the absurd cycle of birth and death and atonement mortal man endured would, too.

Soon Mastemah's own torment would be a memory.

The killer was coming once more to Pithom.

The gates opened.

After raiding Pete's body for his bag of ammunition, Barclay and Day found the cellar stair and emerged in the kitchen. They each took a silver dinner knife from the dining room cabinet and quickly searched the ground floor. Barclay found a Colt pistol and belt in one of the rooms and Wirz's copy of
The
Chronicle of Mastemah
. Day emerged from Wirz's bedroom with a fistful of coin-sized engraved talismans, each on its own silver chain.

“My bodyguards,” Day said. “They took them off me when I was admitted. I was afraid they'd destroyed them.”

“Anything useful?” Barclay asked as Day looped them over his head two at a time. He caught glimpses of pentacles and archaic inscriptions, but they weren't really in his line.

“Everything's useful at the proper time, Barclay.”

It was something the elder Day used to tell them. Barclay handed over
The
Chronicle of Mastemah
.

“Then maybe this will come in handy.”

Day slid the book into the small of his back and peered at him curiously.

“Are you all right? You don't look very spry.”

“I been dead and buried. Try it yourself and see how spry you are.”

“We should see to Wirz's wife.”

The fire had died out, and since Mrs. Wirz was drugged and in no danger, they left her, running toward the stockade.

Barclay insisted on a detour to the cemetery, where he swiftly dug up the trick from Clemis's grave, opened the coffin, and, taking his black thread and needle, sewed up the mouth of the Wirz doll inside.

“Jesus. This ain't too Christian, is it, Barclay?” Charlie remarked, looking nervously around the silent graveyard as a chilly wind kicked up and blew dark clouds across the face of the moon.

“Time's a-wasting,” Day said. “What the hell are we doing here?”

“We might not be able to hurt Mastemah, but Wirz is still subject to the hex I put on him. I can't outright kill him, but I can shut him up awhile.”

Unearthing the trick had upset the spell. Wirz's sickness wouldn't kill him now. But neither would he be able to speak any power word for the time being.

They quickstepped it for the stockade.

By the time they arrived at the North Gate, thunder was rumbling like an orchestral drum section, an ominous prelude to some triumphal movement.

“Who goes there?” one of the young sentries yelled down when they stepped into the torchlight.

Day had taken Charlie's shotgun for the time being, and he led Charlie and Barclay before him.

“Open up the wicket, son. I caught two rabbits for the pen.”

“Again? Who is that?” the boy insisted.

“Lieutenant Day. Now open up! I wanna be back before the rain hits.”

The wicket creaked open, and they passed through the pine walls.

When they reached the inner stockade, though, they heard an exchange between the boy and the sergeant of the watch, and the two came clambering down the ladder and intercepted them.

“Hang on a second, Lieutenant,” said the sergeant, touching the handle of his pistol as he walked over. “I've got orders.”

Day slammed the butt of the shotgun upside the sergeant's chin and put him down, then covered the wide-eyed boy sentry.

As Barclay took his musket, Day demanded, “Who else came into the stockade tonight?”

“A private and two escapees.”

“Where'd they go?”

“They marched in a half hour ago. I didn't see where they went.”

They dragged the boy to the sutler's shack and tied him up inside.

A heavy rain began to patter outside, beating a rhythm on the tin roof.

“Where would he do it?” Day asked.

“I don't know. The scaffold, maybe.”

Charlie retrieved her shotgun, and they ran out into the rain, which had become a driving torment.

All around, pale skeletal men began to emerge from their shelters and strip naked, letting the rain cleanse them of caked filth and detritus. They stood like ghosts, arms outstretched, faces to the black heavens, as if welcoming the calamity Mastemah was about to enact.

The rain cleared Barclay's head a bit, anyway, drumming the fog from his head in an icy staccato.

As they made their way unnoticed to the gallows, someone shouted at them through the slanting downpour.

Day and Charlie turned their weapons on the unknown person.

“Brother Lourdes! Brother Lourdes!”

It was the Hatter, Corbett. Barclay slapped the barrels of their weapons aside.

“Boston?”

“The creek, brother!” he shouted, gesticulating toward the footbridge that spanned the polluted stream. “Come along quickly! You must stop him!”

Barclay nodded, and they followed the madman toward the stream.

The creek was spilling over its banks, and they had to plod through a sucking marsh by the time they neared the bridge.

Sure enough, in the center of the bridge, the water up to their ankles, were Wirz and Limber, the latter bearing a slight, drooping form in his arms; the former, the still glowing sacrificial branding iron.

As they got closer, Wirz appeared distressed and waved Limber back to the far shore. He stooped over and looked to be drawing with his finger in the mud.

“He can't speak!” Barclay yelled over the storm, not fully able to stifle his grin.

“He must be writing it down for the other one to say!” Day shouted.

“I'm a piss-poor shot,” Barclay said, looking at his pistol doubtfully.

“You always were,” Day said, lifting the musket to his cheek and taking careful aim across the sloshing water.

Day squeezed the trigger and cursed as the hammer fell on an empty charge.

So Barclay had been right. They didn't load the sentries' muskets at all.

“Ah, Jesus Christ,” Charlie groaned, raising her shotgun. “Let me.”

“Watch the girl!” Barclay hissed.

She barely aimed at all and discharged a barrel.

Limber's head rocked back, and he sat down hard, slapping his hand to his face. It was too much to ask for a kill shot at that distance. But of course, the shotgun wouldn't kill him, anyway.

Wirz whirled to face them as Day gave a yell and charged across the footbridge with his bayonet in front of him.

Beside him, the Hatter ignored the bridge and splashed into the water up to his waist.

Barclay started to follow Day and got as far as putting his foot on the half-sunken bridge when Limber got to his feet and with a roar sprang impossibly high into the air and cleared the creek in one bound.

Charlie shrieked and ran into the maze of shelters, firing her shotgun behind her.

Limber staggered from another hit but drew his pistol and gave chase.

She wouldn't live long against Limber. A series of rapid shots across the water drew his attention back to Day, who was splashing halfway across the bridge when Wirz drew his LeMat and began to blast away.

He didn't know if it was the Dutchman or the demon who was such a bad marksman, but four of the shots struck the bridge or plopped into the creek and the fifth seemed to harm nothing other than Day's sleeve.

The LeMat had a single-shot shotgun round, though, and as Day cleared the bridge, Wirz gave him that, the muzzle flaring brightly as it discharged. Barclay heard Day give a shout and falter as he was hit, but still he kept coming.

Wirz dropped his smoking pistol and narrowly dodged the stabbing bayonet. He brought his arm down on the barrel of the musket, and it shattered in Day's arms.

Day whipped out the silver knife and jabbed at Wirz's face.

Wirz threw up that pestilent arm again, and Day planted the knife in it.

Day leaped at Wirz then and was backhanded.

Barclay gasped, remembering how one of the kastirin had knocked Skinny's head entirely around. The blow caught Day in the center of his chest and popped him up in the air a good eight or nine feet and halfway across the creek till he landed in the middle.

He wasn't unconscious, though. He held the silver knife clear of the water in both hands.

Barclay splashed in and dragged Day out by the collar of his jacket.

He was coughing up blood and gasping for air, but he struggled to shove the bloody silver knife into his inner coat pocket.

On the other shore, Wirz turned from them back to Cora, but the girl was no longer lying on the bank.

Then Barclay saw the Hatter, Boston Corbett, making his escape into his own tent with the girl in his arms.

Wirz was wheeling around on the shore, looking frantically for the girl. He hadn't seen the Hatter make off with her.

“Hey!” Barclay hollered, and lifted his pistol with both hands and fired at Wirz.

Miraculously, he winged the captain, the .44 ball forcibly spinning him around to face them.

And then in the flash of the lightning, beneath the stomach-churning rumble of the intermittent thunder that had apparently so far obscured the gunfire to the witless sentries, Barclay saw Wirz's bad arm swell to ten times its size. It burst from his sleeve and fell heavily to the ground, elongating and undulating like a massive vine, stretching nearly fifteen feet. The angry flesh prickled and burst with a series of jagged spines that he realized were culled from the bones of Wirz's arm. The fingers on the huge hand stretched and writhed independently like the tentacles of an octopod.

With a wrathful expression, Wirz swept that monstrous limb along the rows of wood shelters, tents, and dugouts clustered nearby and leveled them with a tremendous crash, sending the men within spilling out like ants from a kicked hill.

Barclay swallowed his terror and fired the ridiculously small-sounding pistol again.

Wirz flinched and began to stalk across the bridge, dragging the arm through the dark water beside him, cutting a wake like the passage of some leviathan. The glowing brand, somehow unquenched by the sheets of rain, was poised in his other hand.

Barclay lifted the wheezing Day to his feet.

“Come on, Quit!” he hollered; they wheeled around and ran.

Charlie whimpered and reloaded the shotgun with the last two shells from the bag as she staggered up the slick, rickety steps of the gallows and collapsed on the platform.

She had fought alongside her husband, proved herself as a soldier, but she'd never taken a bullet wound before, and Limber had hit her twice now in their wild running exchange: once in the back of the left thigh and once across her right forearm. The arm hurt worse, but she knew the thigh wound was more grievous. The rain was washing away much of the blood, but she knew she was losing a great deal from there.

Now, as she lay on her back at the top of the stair, squinting up into the pouring blackness, she considered putting the shotgun under her own chin.

There were horrific things happening here this night. Un-Christian things she couldn't begin to understand. She knew somehow that Limber and the strange child he'd put inside her were part of it. When Limber had dragged her from their tent and taken her to Wirz, she had thought he had learned about the child and was giving her over to the Rebels to get rid of it. But when they hadn't taken her to the hospital but to Wirz's house and tied her up in the cellar, she had been completely bewildered.

Then they had said things in front of her, Wirz and General Winder, and Turner and Limber, too. Things that she didn't understand but that she knew they would kill her for hearing.

Limber was worse than a coward and a rapist; he was some kind of honest-to-God monster.

When she saw him enter the clearing, she knew he didn't intend to kill her, and that terrified her.

She rolled across the platform away from the stair as he came.

“Chrlieee,” he said to her through his ruined mouth. Her first shot had blown a hole in the side of his face, and his broken teeth were exposed beneath the ragged flesh. His whole face had been pocked with buckshot. “Dn't wunna hrrrt yehhh,” he said, putting his pistol in his holster as he reached the bottom step.

She sobbed and crawled to the far end of the platform. She looked over the edge. She could tumble off when he got near, but she couldn't run anymore. Couldn't escape.

“Whunna tek you away frrum eer, Chrlieee,” he said.

The whole platform rocked with his weight on the stair.

She saw the crown of his head, but she couldn't lift the shotgun.

He had his hands out at his sides, placating, like a man about to grab a stray cat.

Blood spurted from the side of his face as he gurgled his words.

“Wee kin strrt a'fmmly. You'n me. Gnna mrrry you…make a life. Wll make mrr chillen. I kin bring muh frends up thn.”

She shook and pulled herself closer to the edge with her free hand. What was he talking about? Marry her? More children? Bring what friends up from where?

“Chrliee, yuh dn't know…whut hell's like. Fire, pain, shit. Screamin' all thuh time. N'ver ends…This…so much bettr.”

He put his foot on the platform, towering over her. Crouching a little, coming closer.

Her hand snaked underneath the platform edge and found a piece of rope looped there. She knew instantly what it was.

He came closer, reaching out now.

“Chrliee…bttr this way.”

She yanked the rope for all she was worth.

The plank gave way under Limber's feet as the stays fell away. He dropped but caught himself before he hit the ground, hands clasping the edge of the trap.

She scrambled for the shotgun lying at her side.

Limber hauled himself up.

His head cleared the hole.

She slid the barrels toward him until they bumped against his forehead.

“Bit…!” he managed, before she jerked the double trigger.

The butt of the shotgun slammed hard against her and pitched her against the scaffold. Everything above the bridge of Limber's nose simply blew away like the roof of a house in a tornado, leaving something like a melted candle lined with teeth behind before it disappeared through the trap. After all he had already persevered through, she half imagined he would reemerge through the trapdoor, even headless, spilling brains and squirting her with blood, his mouth still mumbling wishfully. But apparently not even whatever Limber was could keep at it minus a head.

Charlie lay curled against the gallows pole and closed her eyes. Every sob wracked her exhausted body like a kick, and finally the rainy darkness all about slipped in and she knew no more.

Barclay collapsed alongside the sutler's shack at the end of Market Street, and Day sank down beside him. They sat panting, listening, as Wirz rampaged through the camp, uprooting the shelters and flinging the screaming men away when he saw they were not Barclay or Day.

They could hear the tumult coming closer.

Why weren't the guards responding? Why wasn't artillery fire pouring into the stockade? Had Wirz and Winder issued some special order for this night?

The ritual wasn't stopped yet. It had only been postponed. They couldn't remain in hiding, either, because what if Wirz stumbled across Cora and the Hatter? The hex was preventing him from uttering the trigger word of the ritual, but he could still compel anyone else to do it for him.

He had kept the brand. Had he not had the opportunity to mark Cora yet? Well, that was something at least.

Day's head rolled and fell against Barclay's shoulder. His lips were bloody. He was bleeding inside. Perhaps his ribs had been smashed or splintered and a lung had been penetrated.

But when he gasped his words, they were not concerned with his own state.

“We can't kill Wirz. No way to stop him.”

Day was right. They had no weapons on hand that could do anything against Wirz or the rampaging Mastemah within him.

And yet…

“Maybe we don't need to,” Barclay said.