Page 5 of That Ain’t Witchcraft

“I do.” I took my eyes off the corn long enough to throw a grin over my shoulder at him. It wasn’t a surprise to see that he’d relaxed into his natural form. If anything, it was a relief. When he’s not focusing on looking human, Sam is faster, stronger, and sturdier—all good things in a fight. “Now go, so I can stay a breathing jerk.”

He rolled his eyes and was gone, leaping into the air with an ease that I could only envy and vanishing into the rustling rows of corn.

Speaking of rustling. I returned my attention to the corn in front of me, and the half-glimpsed shape that had retreated there after I sliced off a chunk of it. I pulled the other scythe from my waistband, holding them in front of me. Not my preferred weapons, but knives aren’t as effective against an entire killer cornfield as I might like, and flexibility is sometimes the key to survival.

“All right,” I said. “Come on if you’re coming, or stop wasting my time.”

The corn rustled and was silent. I tensed, bracing myself.

The corn attacked.

Blights-with-a-capital-B are thankfully rare. Their spores can only sprout under very specific conditions, and those conditions aren’t met as often as they used to be. Something big had wandered into this field at the start of everything—a deer, maybe, or someone’s sick cow. It had made it into a part of the maze where people didn’t go, and it had died, and it had had the bad luck to do it atop a Blight spore. The fungus had woken up in response to the feast, sending its hyphae deep into the flesh of the unfortunate animal, and it had grown, and it had eaten well.

The smell of the Blight would have been horrific during those early growth stages, when it was nothing but decay and hunger. That must have attracted its first victim, some farmhand or local civic employee who had managed not to be included in the list of official disappearances by virtue of being gone long before the first kissing couple dropped off the radar.

Well, I’d found them. All of them.

The Blight rushed at me in the fungus-wrapped, corn-swaddled form of that unidentified first victim, an unspeakable scarecrow creation of meat and rot and fury. Its hands, one missing half the fingers, were outstretched to grasp and tear at my flesh. It would have my throat out if it could, feeding itself in the warm spray of my blood while its hyphae worked their way into the meat of me, beginning the process of conversion.

Blights are awful things. They’re about half as smart as the smartest thing they’ve eaten, and since this one had been eating humans for a while now, it was clever enough to lurk, plan, and pounce. It had been going after the distracted couples because it knew they were easy prey. Its only mistake—so far—had been assuming that Sam and I were equally distracted.

I grinned, gave my scythes a spin, and met it halfway.

My parents started my self-defense training when I was four years old. It would have been sooner, but I’d been the youngest and quietest of three, and I guess they’d thought they had a little time. The only reason they’d figured out how wrong they were was because I’d started setting tripwires around the living room, which was pretty impressive for someone who was still figuring out how to tie her own shoes. What can I say: I’ve always been an overachiever.

The Blight moved fast but jerkily, like it wasn’t fully connected to its own body, probably because it wasn’t. It was a vast, slow fungal intelligence, operating its terrible meat puppets for its own benefit. The one it had chosen to take us out lunged for me. I spun my scythes as I danced to the side, cleaving its arms off at the elbows. It howled, the sound more animal than anything else about it, and lunged again.

This time my strike took its arms off at the shoulders. They snapped like the hollow, rotten things they were, spilling out the smell of rot and a cascade of writhing maggots and dried-out corn cobs. The Blight would eat anything it could get its substance on, spreading and growing, stripping the land. The corn was already infected, every bit of it, and I spared a moment’s thanks for the fact that this corn had never been intended for eating: the commercial crops were in a different field. What we were about to do wasn’t going to leave the family who owned the farm destitute and starving.

Bored, maybe. The maze was officially closed for the remainder of the season.

There are traditions all over the world—or at least everywhere corn is grown—of burning the cornfields at the end of the harvest. It’s supposed to help the soil. Whether it does, I couldn’t tell you, but I know a good burning is the only reliable way to kill a Blight once it takes root, and a few preemptive burnings will pretty much guarantee your farm stays clean. Assuming you catch it before your brain is a swampy mess of fungus and you no longer remember what it is to burn.

Another Blight-body lunged from the corn, strands of fungus and clots of corn silk tangled in the rotted remains of its long brown hair. It didn’t have eyes, just pulsing pits of Blight, but it tracked me all the same, and as I staggered backward to avoid its grasping hands, something else grabbed hold of my ankle.

Eleven disappearances, at two people per disappearance, plus the person who’d originally fallen into the corn to incubate the Blight spore equaled way more bodies than I was equipped to handle alone. I spun and hacked at the hand holding my ankle, hoping Cylia’s field of improbable luck was holding and the thing hadn’t managed to break the skin. Blight aren’t zombies, they’re fruiting bodies controlled by a greater, if subhuman, mind, but every cut and scratch increased my chances of infection, even with the best fungicide on the market. I’d rather skip the risk, thanks.

I swung the scythe in my left hand for the nearest Blight, only to have it twist at the last moment, so the blade embedded itself in the broadest point of the Blight’s chest. I realized what was about to happen an instant too late to do anything about it. The Blight fell, and in the process, wrenched the scythe out of my hand.

It was smart enough to know I needed my weapons if I was going to win, and it had sufficient bodies that it could afford to sacrifice a few in the name of victory. I, on the other hand, only had one body, and if I lost it, I was fucked.

A Blight grabbed my right wrist. I slapped it on the shoulder as hard as I could, expecting it to burst into flames. It did not oblige. I froze.

You know the only thing worse than developing semicontrollable pyrokinesis? Losing it and being suddenly faced with the reality of a world that refuses to burn just because you asked it to. The Blight yanked me closer. I switched the scythe to my left hand and started hacking, trying to get the thing to let me go before it could reach me with its terrible teeth. Belatedly, the thought that maybe going up against an entire cornfield full of man-eating fungus on my own wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had—and I’ve had some really terrible ideas.

“Annie! Duck!”

I stopped hacking and hit the ground the second I heard Sam shout. The Blight’s arm was weakened enough from my repeated blows that it couldn’t hold me when gravity was on my side; it let go and howled. It was still trying to decide whether it should charge the newcomer or drop and rip my throat out when the jet from the flamethrower hit it squarely in the face.

Yes, flamethrower. When you can’t generate your own flames, artificial flames will do. I rolled away from the thrashing pyre the Blight had become, and kept rolling as Sam directed the flames in a wide arc, igniting multiple Blights and a substantial amount of the corn.

“Remind me again why we didn’t do this in the first place?” he shouted.

“Because we had to be sure it was Corn Blight, and not something really nasty!” I scrambled to my feet, grabbing the second flamethrower from its place against his leg.

God, I love my job sometimes.

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