XX

It was the most beautiful sight of his life. Ruby-red fire bloomed into life across the center of the corpse-thing's mass, catching on its dried out flesh and the lamp oil covering it. A spasm wracked its body outwards from the blaze. Caff cried out as the bone-spears in his hand and leg twisted in the wounds they had made. The fire quickly curled down its legs and licked up its stabbing limbs. The corpse-thing tore those limbs free of him in a horrid wrench. Pain beyond pain flooded him and robbed him of his senses. Time passed as he curled around his wounds, ignorant of all else. Seconds, probably, and no more than a few. It was enough time for half his front room to catch fire.

Through bleary, tearing eyes he saw a burgeoning inferno. His stove was smashed flat, cupboards above it hanging in splinters from their screws. That pile of metal and wood sparked and smoldered, covered as it was in a film of burning oil and skin. From there the corpse-thing had plowed into the sitting area. There had been a chair, a carpet, and some mostly empty shelves. All burning now. Smoke, black and scorching, spread like fog across the ceiling. It'd be filling his lungs and throat pretty soon. He had to get out of here before that happened. If he could move. He tried and all his injuries protested at once, curling him back in on himself.

He heard more than saw the corpse-thing smash through the frame of his bedroom door. The impact tore free its stabbing legs, shorn messily off from the center bulk. He watched the fire turn the flesh to ash and score the jagged bones beneath. Smoke crawled across his ceiling in a scorching cloud, ash falling like rain. He could taste it on his tongue, feel its dry heat begin to sink down in to his throat. More than anything, it was that what pushed him to try again. How he would, when any effort threw him into spasms of pain, he didn't know. He just knew he had to. Tendrils of smoke began to curl down from the ceiling. The fire's roar grew and grew to deafening, bone-rattling heights. It was time to go.

His first and easiest move was to roll from his side to his stomach. There wasn't much there but bruises. Them, he could handle. From here he could push himself up onto hand-and-knee and crawl to the way out. If the corpse-thing had one last try in it, or the fire grew too fast, or he breathed too much smoke, he'd be done for. Tricky to be sure. He'd have to be real careful. His useless hand he cradled to his chest and felt the blood it wept begin to soak what dryness remained of his nightshirt. His better arm – not good, mind, but better – he pressed the palm of to the floor and pressed himself up.

There was a short, shaking moment of effort where he feared he wasn't able. That his body had suffered too much indignity too quickly and had nothing left to give. He ground his teeth, ash on his tongue, in his throat, and gave a wordless snarl. There was a weight to the flame's heat. It pushed on him, pressed against him. Made it hard to breathe. He got his chest up and balanced on a shaking arm. Next came his knee. His working knee, that was. He curled it into the created space and felt some relief at the newfound sturdiness. Oh, how it pained him. So many sorts, from so many places.

He moved. It was agonizing and slow, but he moved. Ten feet or less it was from where he'd been to his front door. It could have been miles. Timbers groaned and crashed around him as he crawled, charred to nothing by the devouring fire. Sweat and blood dropped from him in equal measure, falling in fat drops to the ash-carpeted floor. His home collapsed around him, the corpse-thing a pile of bone and ember behind. Each breath brought heated smoke and ash to his throat, choking him and slowing him further. He did not stop. If he stopped, he would not start again. Then, he'd die.

That wouldn't do. He kept on, and soon reached the door. Closed, of course. Down on his knees the three or so feet up to the brass knob that would set him free seemed like miles. He could not reach it as he was. Nor could he use his wounded hand to turn it. The very thought seemed to sap his strength. There had to be some other way. He thought on his useless leg, the one with a huge, ragged tear in its thigh. Maybe it could hold weight. Maybe.

Only one way to find out. He braced his good hand against the door as fire curled around the frame. He didn't dare look behind him to see how close it licked to his bared feet. Everything he had, every last piece of grit, he turned to putting his good leg beneath him. Then, foot planted, he began to stand. Tears spilled from the pain and the smoke. He cried out when his wounded leg pulled or stretched as he rose. It was wobbly and ungainly, and would not last more than a few seconds. In those seconds, though, he stood.

The brass doorknob was slick and hot beneath his good hand, but turned with ease. He shoved the door open with his lurching body, managing a sort of half-step out into the night. Through blurred, burning eyes he could see folk running towards him. Mo Adler, his wife Dora, and Miss Agatha Blakely. Leland Heminger, bearing an armful of buckets. Claudia, wide-eyed and frightened. Their cries filled the cold air, mixing together into a concert of worry and concern. He managed another half-step before collapsing, landing hard on his side moments before Mo would have been close enough to catch him.

Instead he dropped to his knees besides Caff, eyes dancing over his many injuries. It was like he was unsure where to even begin. “Sheriff!” he cried, reaching for him and pausing. Caff lifted his good hand, coated in ash and sweat, to reassure him. All he could get out was a weak, smoky cough. Mo took his hand in his own and called out, “He needs the doctor! Someone, go fetch the doctor, Sheriff's in a bad way!” He looked back down to Caff and assured, “You're safe now, Sheriff. We got you. We got you. You gonna be okay.”

Each breath of cold, clean air soothed his scorched-dry throat. Mo helped him sort of sit up with an arm behind his back. Mrs. Adler, Claudia, and Miss Blakely came not too far behind. Leland started distributing buckets, getting a chain to the well going. These were good people here. He had known that, in a distant way. Seeing it was something else. It made it real. He looked at the inferno his home had become and imagined the corpse-thing's ruined bulk in its depths. Fuck you. A vicious thought that came with a vicious grin. I won.

- - -

Time passed in a hazy drift, a distant kind of fog. The rush that had brought him out of his burning home ended pretty quick. What it left behind was a leaden-limbed man covered in bruises and open wounds. Despite his weakness and all the pain that came rushing to fill the gap, he was still in high spirit. Twice now that spirit in orange light had come. With corpses like puppets on strings, clawing and dancing to its horrid tune, it had come and it had failed. Twice. Oh, how he would crow and dance if he could. It felt a poor consolation to just lay there, propped up only by Mo Adler's arm. A consolation he would take, and gladly. “Just hang on, Sheriff,” Mo said, lifting his voice somewhat to be heard over the roaring blaze. “Doc'll be here soon, you'll see.”

Caff managed a reply. It was a weak, smoky sort of grunt that became a cough. He figured it got the message across. He watched as the bucket chain Leland had organized set to in a valiant effort to save his house. If he'd had any ability to, he'd have told them not to bother. In fact, he was the one who'd set it alight in the first place. The look on their faces when they'd learn made him laugh. It lasted a heartbeat before turning to more coughs. They didn't stop, tearing deeper and deeper at his throat. There was a sort of scrape to each wracking heave of his lungs. It hurt, more than anything he'd experienced tonight. Maybe he'd just gotten used to the rest of it.

He tasted blood on his tongue and the back of his teeth before it stopped. He'd curled to his side at some point, falling from Mo's grasp onto the cold earth. It was Claudia who settled to the ground next to him. He looked blearily up at her. The smile she looked down on him with was a trembling thing, meant to reassure them both. “Oh, Addison,” she lamented in a thick, cracking voice, “what have you done to yourself now?”

That was just plain unfair. He meant to tell her as much, but the sound of tearing cloth drew his attention. He looked away from the tears threatening to spill from her eyes and to the source of the sound. Outlined by fire and smoke were Mrs. Adler and Miss Blakely. It was Mrs. Adler who had dug her fingers into a tear in his pants leg and widened it. She wrenched and tore until a wide, long strip of cloth came free. This she wove around the hole in his thigh and stopped short of tying it down. To Miss Blakely she said, “Put your hands here. Hold it steady.” Then to Caff, she warned, “You gonna feel this. Grit your teeth.”

He nodded. Of course he would feel it. He was feeling every scrap of pain he'd accumulated over the past day. The body-wide ache of bruise and battery. The tugging soreness of the stitches beneath his eye. The sharp, scraping pain in his lungs and throat. His leg. His hand. All things considered, he was doing an admirable job handling it all. She took his nod for readiness, which it might actually have been, and tied the cloth. Tight. For a too-brief second, it was fine. A little extra on top.

Then it wasn't. The sound that tore itself from his throat could only be described as wounded. Being stabbed in the first place hadn't hurt like this. It was like staring at the sun: an overwhelming, overpowering moment of pure sensation. It pulled him back into the haze, leaving him aware of and uninterested in the people around him. His stomach threatened to upend, but it was empty.

How he ached for a large, sweaty glass of something cold. Desert-dry, his throat was. Coated in ash and scorched by smoke. He wasn't hungry, he didn't think he ever would be again, but thirst he had to spare. Dimly, he felt himself being moved. His head, shoulders, and chest coming off the ground to rest on something warm. Long, strong bands looped under his arms and legs. Without further warning, he left the ground.

That was when he came back. For a brief, heartbreaking moment he was back in the inferno. Back in front of all six of those burning orange eyes and horrid, leering grins. Its limbs were curled around him and gently, almost tenderly, they were bringing him close. In that moment he struck out, a weak lash of his good arm that was caught by the wrist. Smooth, warm hands enclosed his. It hadn't had hands.

He came back. Truly, this time. His eyes burned from tears, ash, and smoke. Once, twice, three times a blink, and they felt a little better. He saw it wasn't the corpse-thing that had him. Mo carried the lion's share, with his wife and Miss Blakely each corraling one of Caff's legs. It was Claudia that he had almost struck, her hands that had stopped him. It was something like horror that came over him at what he had almost done. There went that vicious feeling of victory, gone in flight from almost striking his own family. “It's all right,” She told him. She patted the back of his hand and placed it on his chest. It was not, not at all. “You're all right, Addison. You're here.”

So he was. Here in this place where his home was gone, where every inch of him caused him pain, and he had almost done something awful. He could hear the creak-and-groan of a wagon and the grumble of a sleepy mule. Past the bitter, heated tears filling his eyes and spilling over, he couldn't see who it was. Barney, probably. He was good people. As Caff was laid in the bed of the wagon, where Everett Swanson had been so few hours ago, he began to weep. He was just too full, and there wasn't anywhere else for it to go.

It hurt. Of course it did. Each rasping sob that escaped him scraped razors up his throat. He couldn't stop himself, though. Didn't really want to. If ever there was a better time for a man to wallow, he could not imagine it. Claudia climbed into the wagon bed next to him. The Adlers made their farewells and best-of-lucks, then went to join the brigade of buckets. The wagon rolled away.