Horace Greene had borrowed Artus’s chainsaw two weeks back and had never returned it. The Greenes were a sorry bloodline, right up there with the Abshers, and there wasn’t any difference between borrowing and stealing if you never brought back the thing you borrowed. But maybe in a head as addled as Horace’s, stealing was okay if you asked permission first.
“We mind our own business in these parts,” Artus said, though the truth was, he was afraid to walk the fifty yards in the dark to his Ford pickup in the gravel driveway, and afraid to see what Horace Greene might have turned into if the heart-stealers got him.
“The president was on TV while you was out in the barn,” Betty Ann said, and Artus finally turned from the window.
“What does that jug-eared son of a bitch got to say about it?” He trusted the president about as much as he trusted Horace Greene.
“Said we all needed to remain calm, and that he was ordering all resources put into addressing the issue.”
“Addressing the issue? That’s what they say when they don’t know a danged thing about what’s happening. If it’s something they can fix, they fix it. If it’s something else that looks like it ain’t got no end in sight, they call it an ‘issue’ and jabber about it until the election, and then they forget all about it.”
“Don’t think they’ll be forgetting this one. Important people are dying, they say. Saw a TV star had caught it, and died.”
“TV star?”
“From one of them reality shows.”
“Huh.” Artus checked the window again. He could barely make out the hulking form of the two-story barn, hay in the top, stalls in the bottom, the chickens long gone to roost, those torn-up bags of men laying around to be harvested.
He shook the image of Billy Standingdeer from his head.
“Well,” he said, “Looks like they’re fixing to get one hell of a reality show, if this keeps up.”
He glanced at the television, and although the sound was turned down, he could tell it was a live report from somewhere in a city, probably New York. That Japanese woman, the one who seemed to take up most of the news these days, was flapping her pretty lips against a microphone, and some words came up on the bottom of the screen.
Artus had dropped out of school in the ninth grade because he always got the letters backwards, and the teacher would mark what he did wrong and made him fix it, then got mad when he turned it in exactly the same. Well, it had looked fixed to him. Eventually they’d started in with some tests and a special teacher, but by then so many kids were making fun of him — the Abshers were a fine hand at that — he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Besides, he’d planned on being a cattleman and a tobacco farmer like his daddy, not knowing the goddamned government would sue the cigarette makers to hell and back and make tobacco almost as illegal as green dope, but growing green dope paid way, way better.
So he couldn’t parse out the words on the screen, but Betty Ann read some of them aloud. “Centers for Disease Control,” she said, sounding a little smart-alecky because she knew Artus couldn’t read. “Atlanta, GA.”
“Centers? They need more than one? This must be a hell of a goddamn issue, then.”
“The president said this was his top priority and he’s putting his best people on it.”
The television switched to a picture of a ramrod man in a dark green military uniform and enough brass on his chest to beat into a decent moonshine still. The officer was walking fast, shoulders back, head down, talking to a woman in a dress suit and a white coat. A bunch of people with cameras and microphones swarmed around them, which must have meant the two people were important.
“Well, we’re a long way from Washington, so I guess we better take care of this ourselves,” Artus said. He was a little ashamed for including Betty Ann in his plan, but he didn’t want to admit he was scared.
“Why do you think it’s Billy Standingdeer?” she asked.
“He was always going on about that Raven Mocker shit. You remember, the Cherokee legend where the evil spirit shows up at a dying man’s house and steals his remaining days. If’n he eats the heart, he gets those days added to his own life.”
“Blue Hartley died of natural causes, they said.”
“Well, what else would they say? These peckerheads with the county been taking training from the federal government. Lies are contagious, too.”
“You know something I don’t?”
He didn’t want to tell her about seeing Billy Standingdeer feasting on some poor fool in the barn. “When I was in town the other day, I talked to Frankie Fowler at the funeral parlor. Said when they went in to dress Hartley for his viewing, his chest was split open.”
“I thought they took all the innards out anyway.”
“Yeah, if the innards are still there, that is.”
“You think Billy took it? Like he’s living out that legend?”
“You know how these Injuns are. They never got over us taking their land. But they weren’t using it no way. All they did was hunt and eat roots and such.”
“I don’t see what they got to complain about. The government set them up with a reservation and they got that shiny casino and everything.”
Artus didn’t want to talk about that damned casino. They’d driven out to Qualla when it had first opened, and Artus had paid eight dollars for one little glass of whiskey, and then the flashy, noisy machines had swallowed about twenty more dollars before he grabbed Betty Ann’s wrist and drove the two hours back to Pickett County.
“Shut up and turn up the TV,” he said, glancing out the window to check the barn again. No sign of movement.
Betty Ann groaned as she rose from her chair. She was putting on weight in her old age, and with her arthritis getting worse, Artus wasn’t looking forward to the rest of their lives. But he wasn’t ready to die, either, and if whatever was eating hearts in Pickett County tried to get in here, Artus had a double helping of twelve-gauge buckshot waiting.
The Japanese television announcer’s voice boomed out, and the words had a little fuzz of interference in them. Artus thought she talked pretty good for a Jap, but she looked way too young to be jabbering about something as important as heart-eaters and blood-drinkers running loose.
“— the president has appointed an advisory committee to investigate the apparent mutations, what some are calling a contagious outbreak,” she said.
The video cut away to footage of people standing in line in a department store, their arms loaded with goods as they pushed and shoved. “The reports have created a panic in some municipal areas, with people stocking up on batteries, food, and even firearms, despite the president’s assurances that the situation is under control,” the reporter said over the footage.
“Under control, my ass,” Artus muttered. “Frankie said a man over in Whispering Pines was found in the back of a pickup, every ounce of blood drained out of him. I don’t know what that Injun was up to in the barn, but it wasn’t natural. I don’t know what kind of disease does that. Whatever it is, it’s here now.”
“You think maybe Billy caught it and that’s what got him acting crazy? Maybe if he has the fever, he started believing in the old legends.”
“And come to revenge his ancestors? I don’t reckon.”
“According to sources, some bodies have been found in groups, suggesting the killers are somehow herding or confining their victims. Genetic mutations could lead to such predatory behavior.” The Jap reporter was still rattling off a bunch of big words, which Artus ignored, because something clattered on the roof.
“Did you hear that?” Betty Ann asked.
“Shhh,” Artus hissed. Betty Ann had made it through high school but sometimes she was dumb as a hitching post.
The Jap reporter started yapping faster. “The infection has been referred to as the ‘vampire virus’ because of the potential mutations —”
Artus grabbed his shotgun with one hand, scrambled across the room on his creaky knees, and punched the television knob so that the house fell silent. He strained his ears against the night, and a soft wind pushed the tree branches around, but other than that, he couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of his own pulse against his eardrums.
Then came a shriek that might have been a high howling wind. Or maybe a giant raven cutting through the air.
“Do you think it’s him?” Betty Ann whispered.
“Well, the Raven Mocker is a raven, ain’t it?” he sneered, but he knew it was fear that made him angry. “And a raven is a bird. And a bird can fly.”
“But the TV called them vampires —”
“Vampires ain’t real. Any fool knows that.”
Vampires, maybe not, but Raven Mockers…who knows?
Tin crimped and crumpled high overhead.
He didn’t want to think about Billy Standingdeer walking around on the roof. Artus was pretty sure that people with the disease couldn’t grow wings and fly. But there was a big oak tree that grew right beside the house, and a crazed Injun could scramble right up, shinny out on a branch, and drop down onto the house. Artus shook away the image of the young Cherokee perched there on the branch, long black hair swaying in the breeze as he peered into the lighted windows.
While Artus crept to the foot of the stairs, Betty Ann went to the window, clutching the little scrap of knitting. Something thunked on the roof, a metallic ripple that reached deep into Artus’s bones.
“They’s something moving out there,” Betty Ann said.
Artus paused with one boot on the stairs. “It’s just Billy.”
“I thought you said Billy’s on the roof.”
“Yeah, and Billy’s the only one of them. If he’s on the roof, there can’t be nothing out there. So shut your mouth.”
“You heard the TV. They said it was spreading.”
“It’s only spreading in the city, where people are all piled up on top of one another.”
