It was Mrs. Hatchell who came up with the winning plan. She woke up Monika and I at dawn to tell us about it.
“We’ll burn it,” she said in a voice filled with resolve. I recalled that Erik had been one of those students who had hung around her counseling office for years. She had never had any children, she thought of all us school kids as her children and her hate for the tree that had killed Erik was palpable.
“How?” asked Monika. She was still lying on her cot in the same room with me. Mrs. Hatchell had found us there again, but this time she hadn’t complained about fraternization among the young or anyone else’s delicate state of mind. This morning she was on a mission. A mission to kill a tree.
“We’ve got propane tanks, but no blow torches,” I said.
“No, not the propane. The gasoline,” she said, eyeing me directly.
I opened my mouth to say, “What gasoline?” then stopped. “You mean from the basement, from the generators.”
“Right. They aren’t working now anyway, so what the hell good are they? If we live, we can get more fuel. There is plenty in town, we can refill them later.”
I nodded, it made sense.
“We need liquid, something that will stick,” she went on. I could see in the dark pit of her eyes that she had been thinking about it all night.
“I wonder how much burn damage it can take and still live?” I said out loud. “A normal tree, full of green sap and soaked with rainwater, is not easy to burn down to a stump.”
“I doubt we’ll have to burn it to a stump,” said Mrs. Hatchell. “The thing seems to eat now. It had to change significantly to do that. I doubt it is even made of wood all the way through.”
Monika came up and touched my back with a small hand. Her other hand, with her wrist in a cast, she hugged against her chest. “I don’t want you to fight the tree again, Gannon,” she said. There was a pleading quality to her voice. I was surprised and wasn’t sure how I felt.
Mrs. Hatchell turned narrow eyes on her. “Gannon isn’t just your personal protector, Monika. We all need him on the front line. I doubt the rest would have the guts to face that thing without him. But if he goes after it, they will join him.”
Monika narrowed her eyes in return, and the way her lips tightened I knew very bad words were about to be exchanged. I’d already learned that Monika had a quick temper. I put myself between them and said, “Look, I’ll go talk to Doc Wilton about this. I think it is a good idea, we just need to talk it over with the others.”
Mrs. Hatchell wasn’t having any of that, however. “Forget her. She’s given up. You’re the leader now. After yesterday, it’s obvious.”
I opened my mouth in surprise. I didn’t want to be anybody’s leader, I wasn’t even thirty yet. I didn’t want to have to think for a group. I wondered where the hell the Preacher was and hoped he was still alive. “I’ve just been trying to do the right thing,” I said lamely.
“And you’ve been doing a fine job of it. Yesterday’s trauma would have put some men into a shaking, broken state, but you are back and ready for more. Every tribe needs a chieftain, especially when there’s a war on. Just do it.”
Monika tucked her good hand into my belt behind me, getting a grip on me as if she felt I was going to get away. It was a possessive action, and I noticed she was still glaring at Mrs. Hatchell.
I put my hands up in a gesture for calm. “Emotions are running high here,” I told them both. “I’m going to talk to the others, we were talking about this all night, and we do want to make a try for it. Maybe you two should talk together a bit.”
Catching Mrs. Hatchell’s eye I made a significant gesture toward Monika.
“Okay,” she said. “We have plenty to talk about.”
When I moved to leave, Monika held on and followed me into the hallway. She came close and it became hard to think.
“Gannon, you tried to stop it. Erik is dead, but that is not your fault,” she told me. “You have done enough. Someone else can do the finish.”
I nodded, kissed her on the head, and said, “I’m just going to talk to them.”
I left her and went to find the others. I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t look back.
Eighteen
The gasoline idea went over big. We could imagine setting the thing alight and standing back to toast marshmallows while it flailed about. No one wanted to take hatchets to it like a pack of pygmies pin-pricking an elephant while it ate us one at a time.
“First, we’ll pick off the flying things, sniper-style,” I said.
I teamed up three people with hunting rifles to take care of the flyers. Wilton had always been more into hunting than most women, so I suggested she should lead the sniper team. I paired her up with Nick Hackler and Jason Dagen, both of whom knew their way around a rifle.
“We’ll try not to miss,” she said with a weak grin.
“Who’s fast on their feet?” I asked the huddle, I looked around and pointed at Vance. “You, Vance. You will be the decoy.”
“Decoy?” he choked.
“Someone will have to give it something to chase. Once it’s on fire, we don’t want it crashing into the lobby and burning this whole place down.”
“So, I’m the bait? What, am I supposed to tie an ass-load of tin cans to myself and run around in the street?”
I nodded, “Something like that. Whatever gets it to chase you while it is burning. Certainly, you need to be louder than the rest of us while we retreat into the building.”
Vance’s mouth hung open. “And what is everyone else going to be up to?”
“I’ll get the gas out of the gens,” said Brigman. “And I’ll swing this axe when it comes down to it.”
“I’ll throw the gas on it,” said Carlene.
“I will too,” said Monika. I had been surprised when she had joined the group. She seemed to have decided to become a fighter.
“What about your wrist?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips. “It’s okay.” She demonstrated by clonking the cast on a tabletop and flexing her fingers. It did look like she could heft a bucket if she had to. It troubled me that she was going out there with us, but I couldn’t really see a reason to keep her out of it. She was half the age of some of the others who were going, and if an old bat like Mrs. Hatchell was going, why shouldn’t a younger, stronger woman join the battle? It wasn’t like we had a SWAT team of athletic professionals handy.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s have each of the women ready with a half-full bucket of gas. The men will carry the heaviest cutting tools we have in case a root gets hold of someone. Vance will be the rabbit, and once it’s burning hard and chasing him, we’ll all slip back inside.”
“And how do I get back?” demanded Vance.
“You outrun it and circle back. It should be pretty well messed up after burning for awhile.”
Vance breathed hard and blinked for a few seconds. He was probably thinking of all the other things the strange storm might have awakened out there, all of the things we didn’t have any inkling about yet. He was critical to the plan. If I did the running around, and something went wrong, I wasn’t sure I could keep the rest of them together. I wasn’t sure we could keep it together in any regard. If one of us was grabbed by those roots and dragged into the inferno, would the others keep throwing gas on? Would they stand their ground against a nightmare ten times the size of any we’d seen before? I didn’t know.
“I always wanted to be the hero,” said Vance after a bit, looking around at everyone. “I guess this is my chance.”
The first steps went off without a hitch. We snuck down into the large, dank basement. We weaved past old office furniture and medical equipment that should have been hauled away years ago. There were broken gurneys and outdated X-ray machines and ancient computer terminals that were now wired together only by cobwebs. In a back room where the generators slept, we broke out the surgical tubing and prepared to siphon off the gas. The basement reeked of mold and wet concrete, until we started to fill the buckets and then all odors were replaced with the special stink of gasoline. We got about six gallons out of the two generators plus a few more from the cans kept down there. We had plenty of two-gallon plastic buckets, and after filling each one with about a gallon we hauled them upstairs again and handed out three buckets each to the women. We thought about rigging up Molotov cocktails but figured it was too risky without practicing. The last thing we wanted was a nasty accident.