Mason looked back at the old woman. He tightened his grip on her frail hand just enough to let her feel the unshakeable weight of his presence.
"Mrs. Vance," Mason said, his voice dropping into an oath that left no room for doubt. "You listen to me now. Arthur isn't riding to his rest alone. Tomorrow morning, you put that coat on, you take your seat in the family car, and you don't worry about that chapel. The Iron Drifters will handle the rest."
Margaret stared at him through red-rimmed eyes, stunned, her mouth slightly parted. "You... you don't even know us."
"He was our brother before we were born, ma'am," Mason said simply. "Go home. Get some sleep."
The sun had barely cleared the jagged ridges of the eastern hills when the chill of dawn gave way to a heavy, breathless morning. Oakridge Memorial Cemetery lay three miles south of town, perched on a limestone bluff overlooking the winding green ribbon of the river valley. It was an old ground; many of the granite headstones had tilted into the Bermuda grass, their inscriptions softened by a century of spring rains and winter frosts.
By quarter to ten, the small cemetery chapel sat under a heavy shroud of silence.
The hearse from Miller & Sons Mortuary stood parked on the narrow gravel loop, its polished black chassis gathering a fine film of dust. The four pallbearers provided by the mortuary—two high school boys working summer jobs and two elderly greeters in oversized black suits—stood awkwardly near the open rear doors, checking their wristwatches against the midday sun.
Beneath the green canvas awning erected over Grave 412, a solitary row of eight folding metal chairs stood on the artificial turf.
The minister, a young man with a crisp collar and a black leather Bible under his arm, was pacing slowly near the headstone, adjusting his reading glasses and squinting at a single sheet of yellow legal paper containing Margaret’s handwritten notes. Beside him sat Margaret, dwarfed by the folding chair, clutching her cherrywood cane with both hands, her head bowed beneath her blue pillbox hat. There was no one else. No cars parked on the gravel shoulder; no neighbors walking up the hill; no distant relatives murmuring in the grass. The silence of the empty hillside felt vast, cold, and final.
"Mrs. Vance," the young minister murmured softly, kneeling beside her chair with a sympathetic smile. "It's ten o'clock. The cemetery has another service scheduled for the lower terrace at eleven. If there's no one else arriving, perhaps we should begin our opening prayer?"
Margaret did not look up from her lap. She nodded once, a microscopic tilt of her chin, her soul bracing for the hollow emptiness she had dreaded for months. "Yes, pastor. Let us begin."
The minister cleared his throat and stepped to the podium at the head of the flag-draped mahogany casket. He opened his Bible, lifting his eyes toward the empty chairs. "We are gathered here today to commit to the earth the body of Arthur—"
The air changed.
It did not begin as a sound; it began as a vibration in the soles of their shoes.
The minister paused, frowning down at his polished dress shoes as the grass beneath them seemed to tremble. The plastic flowers in the cemetery vases shivered against their wire stems. In the hearse, the driver looked up from his clipboard, his eyes darting toward the western treeline.
From beyond the ridge, where the county highway curved around the limestone quarry, came a sound like a summer squall tearing through dry timber—a low, guttural, subterranean roar that grew with terrifying velocity.
Over the crest of the hill, tearing through the quiet morning air, came the vanguard.