Bloodstained Oz Read online

“Kalidah!” the lion growled. “Leave them!”

  Gayle frowned. She was about to shout back to him, ask him what he was talking about.

  Then there came another jungle roar, just as loud and thunderous as the lion’s. But it was not the lion. The sound was too close, off to the right. She threw herself to one side and pulled the flap back to see at an angle, and there it was, running at the edge of the road, catching up to the wagon.

  The thing was bigger than the lion. It had the head of a tiger but its body was more like an enormous, lumbering bear. In the moonlight she could see that its fur was streaked orange and black. Tiger stripes.

  Kalidah. That was what the lion called it.

  Gayle screamed, rigid with fear, unable even to drop the curtain so that she would not have to see it anymore. The Kalidah heard her and even as it lunged for the back of the wagon, it looked at her with its bright red eyes and bared long, bloody fangs in a terrible grin.

  But she had distracted it. Her scream must have made Elisa snap the reins, for the horses redoubled their efforts. The wagon surged forward and the Kalidah faltered. For a moment it stumbled on the road.

  Then the lion was upon it.

  All around the wagon she heard the screaming of the flying monkeys, but now the vicious little vampire beasts left the wagon alone, darting back to help the Kalidah. The two jungle creatures roared and got up on their hind legs. They batted at one another with their claws, slashing deep furrows into flesh, spilling blood on the dusty road.

  But Gayle knew that the Kalidah was a vampire. Claws would not kill him. He could be drained of blood completely and would only continue to seek more.

  The monkeys were attacking the lion then. There were only a few of them left and he leaped away from the Kalidah for a moment, snatching a monkey out of the air with his jaws, biting its head off even as he shattered a second one with one paw.

  The Kalidah roared again, and it laughed with a sound that seemed to come from the night itself, from all of the arid fields and dead crops and all of the spilled blood from that long, terrible night.

  Gayle tore herself away, staggering to the front of the wagon. She pushed her face up to the little window to find Elisa whipping the reins, driving the horses even harder. Hank had the shotgun aimed at the fields off to the left—the north—where a miserable little crop of thistle grew on a small farm.

  “You have to stop and help him!” the girl said. “Please. He saved me. Saved all of us. It’s going to kill him.”

  Hank spun and looked down at her. “We can’t stop. Look!”

  He gestured with the barrel of the shotgun and she peered into the night. At first she had missed it, but now she wondered how she could not have seen the dozens of tiny lights glowing in the darkness of the thistle field, glowing sickly green and moving quickly across that dead farm toward the road, moving as though to cut off the wagon up ahead.

  “Those are the things that attacked the prison,” Hank said, glancing down at the little girl. “They’ve got emeralds for eyes and their faces . . . their teeth . . . Jesus, I’d rather face any of the other things we’ve seen.”

  Elisa risked a glance back.

  “Gayle, we don’t even know if the crosses will frighten them.”

  “But the lion,” Gayle said, pleading, staring at Elisa first and then looking to Hank. “We can’t just . . . you can’t leave him. You can’t just run away.”

  Hank flinched as though she’d struck him. He turned on her, anger flashing in his eyes, a cruelty she would not have expected him to have.

  “Now you listen to me, little girl—“ he began. But then he faltered, as though he had lost track of his words. Hank looked at the emerald-eyed vampires sprinting through the darkness toward them, so fleet over the rough terrain of the thistle field, and then he looked down at his hands.

  There was a green glow by his right hand. Something in his pocket had begun to shine with the same tainted green light as the eyes of the vampires that had slaughtered everyone at his prison.

  Hank closed his eyes. He reached into his pocket and brought out his fist, the green light glowing between his fingers as he clutched the object in his hand.

  “Damn it,” he whispered.

  Then he opened his eyes again. He shoved the glowing emerald back into his pocket and made sure the hatchet was secure in his belt. His shovel was gone, but he picked up the shotgun in both hands again and turned to Elisa.

  “Whatever happens, keep on going. We’ll catch up.”

  “What are you talking about?” the woman said, risking a glance at him as she spurred the horses on. “What’s going to happen?”

  Hank tapped the glowing gem in his pocket. “Those things, they want this. I can buy you some time.” He smiled at Gayle. “And the lion needs my help.”

  Gayle smiled back.

  “No! What’s wrong with you? You fool, you’re just a man. They’ll tear you apart.”

  “And if they catch up to the wagon, maybe they’ll tear us all apart,” Hank said. He reached in through the window and took Gayle’s hand. He squeezed it, and she saw the pain in his eyes. Then he looked back at Elisa. “I’ve been running away my whole life. It’s time I stopped.”

  Then he took his hand back and touched the crucifixes against his chest, though Gayle was never certain if he was gesturing to them, or to himself, to the courage in his own heart.

  “Have a little faith,” he said.

  The hill had slowed the horses down a bit, but they were still going fast. Hank braced himself and then jumped from the seat. He hit the ground and rolled with the impact, but then the wagon was hurtling past him and Gayle couldn’t see him anymore.

  Elisa screamed at him, angry and terrified, but she kept on driving the horses. Gayle watched her quietly for a moment. Tears streaked Elisa’s face as she snapped the reins, driving the horses ever harder.

  Gayle went to the back of the wagon again. She pulled the flaps open and peered out at the dusty road behind. Hank ran back toward where the lion and the Kalidah were tearing one another apart, roaring as though he himself were a third jungle beast, come to join the fray. Some of the monkeys screamed and flew at him, and Gayle heard the boom of the shotgun.

  Off across the thistle field, the filthy green, glowing eyes of the emerald vampires turned, following Hank . . . pursuing whatever it was he had taken that belonged to them. They were like ghosts in the night, drifting so swiftly across the dead farmland, haunting what remained of Kansas in the dust bowl.

  The wagon reached the top of the rise. The horses picked up speed as the terrain flattened out and they didn’t have to work as hard. As they crested the hill, Gayle lost sight of Hank and the lion and of the monsters that thirsted for their blood.

  Slowly, Gayle made her way once more to the little window and she looked out past Elisa, now alone up on the seat. She searched the night sky and the road ahead, but there was no sign of trouble.

  The road took them east, toward sunrise. With every step, the horses drew them closer to morning.

  Gayle touched one of the crucifixes on the wall and said a silent prayer for her friends. It was a careful prayer, with a wish that they would be safe, not simply that she would see them again. The difference was important. After all, God could be a real son of a bitch when He wanted to.

  To Gayle, it felt like the storm that had come through the day before had swept her up, that a tornado had ripped her from her home and now carried her through the dust and the darkness toward some unknown land. And after the storm, what then? She had seen rainbows, pretty colors in the sky, when a storm had been through, but she found it hard to imagine anything beautiful coming from this.

  Happy ending were for storybooks.

  Soon, Elisa stopped crying, and Gayle allowed herself to think that maybe they’d make it to sunrise after all. But there were hours of darkness still to go, and the dust was rising off the road, so she did not dare give in to hope. Gayle put her hope away, and would not let it out ag
ain until she could feel the warmth of the sun on her face.

  Or until she saw the rainbow.