The Last Scarecrow

3 | Haybale Fortress

Erin darted across the courtyard, swerving and leaping over chunks of fallen masonry. Tiles and timber discarded by the storm crunched beneath her feet. Vanishing into the thick shadows of the barn, she could hear the heavy boots of the scarecrow behind her, the croak of a blackbird somewhere overhead.

Skidding to the right, she scampered through the low doorway to an elaborate fortress constructed of haybales that hunkered beneath the hayloft. Erin dragged herself in. She curled up as small as she could, her eyes shut tight.

She desperately tried to picture a happier time, a safer time, a place where nothing could harm her. But she couldn't escape the possibility that one of her terrifying scarecrows had just chased her across Coldharbour Farm. She took a long, slow breath and then—

"It's okay," the scarecrow said.

The scarecrow's voice was higher and filled with more joy than her appearance might suggest. But there was also a strangled quality— something mechanical, industrial, rusted— lodged at the back of her throat.

Erin peered down a corridor of haybales, cross-hatched with wicker and bamboo.

"We're not going to harm you," Twelve said, her massive, terrifying bison's skull floated in the doorway.

"That's exactly what psycho-killers say right before they kill you," Erin shivered, shifting herself deeper into the fortress.

Twelve had levered her broad shoulders through the fortress doorway and was reaching down the corridor with her red rubber demon hand.

Erin hissed, backing up against the cardboard wall. She pulled a small carving knife from her dungarees and swiped it aggressively through the air. The blade had dulled over time, but Erin knew it could still do some damage if wielded in the right way.

"What have you got there?" Twelve asked.

Erin's grip tightened around the small knife.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"She looks hungry. Probably planning to eat me," the blackbird said, fluttering into view. "Sooner or later we all become food. If not by predators or scavengers, then devoured by the worms in the soil or the persistence of time."

Erin had often wondered how she would die. Old age or cancer—probably both— seemed most likely. But, during the Many Years Storm, she'd decided that she would most likely starve to death, or die from dehydration, or catch some air-borne virus, or break her leg and succumb to the infection. There was precious little else to kill her on Coldharbour Farm. Some days she wondered what lurked in the waters all around. Would something slither up the hill one day and eat her alive: a hungry alligator or some mutant lizard. She never imagined that she'd fall foul to one of her scarecrows and a morbid blackbird.

Erin waved the knife, cutting the air in weak arcs, wondering if death was going to hurt. "No," she said. "I'll use this knife to stop you eating me!"

Twelve laughed. It sounded like a waterlogged engine trying to start.

"We're not going to eat you. I'm made of wooden struts and rusty bolts and old engine parts," Twelve told her, flexing her elbow that clicked and whirled. "I'll show you if you come out. To be honest, I don't believe I need to eat at all as I don't appear to have a stomach."

"And I only eat seeds, and fruit, and insects," the blackbird added.

He'd taken a seat on the top of the haybale fortress where sheets of flat-packed cardboard boxes had been laid to form a roof and crenelations.

"Although," the blackbird mused, "a human girl would be quite the gastronomic challenge. One that I'm not completely against if I'm being honest—"