Summary: Will Captain Irving be any help to our favorite Witnesses? Will Ichabod finally reveal how he learned to use a chainsaw? After this whole apocalypse business is over, does he have a promising future as a lumberjack?

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Captain Frank Irving put his desk phone back in its cradle.

'I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning,' he thought to himself, 'because God forbid I have one day of relative peace and quiet in this town.'

He stood up, snapping his bewildered mind back on track. Mills was in trouble. Of course it had to be the supernatural kind of trouble. He had to do something, but what exactly did she expect him to do with such little information?

He opened the door to his office and spotted Lieutenant Ford, head of the tactical response team, just coming in off his break.

"Ford! Get your team geared up and ready to go!" Irving ordered.

Lieutenant Ford snapped smartly to attention, "Yes sir! What's happening?"

'Oh, just that Mills says demons are attacking her house...no, can't say that!' Irving paused before answering, "I just got a call from Lieutenant Mills. Unknown assailants are converging on her house. We need to move!"

A few minutes later Captain Irving stood in the parking lot as Ford and his men rushed through their final preparations and loaded into their armored truck. He strapped on a tactical vest and shouted the address to the driver.

"We have two known friendlies inside, Mills and Crane. No details on the assailants, but this may be related to the power station sabotage a few weeks ago. Keep your eyes open!"

"Yes sir!" Ford acknowledged and jumped into the passenger side.

Captain Irving ran to his own vehicle and sped out of the parking lot right behind the truck. In moments he'd be followed by more police cars, sirens blaring.

He had no idea what he was about to face, but these otherworldly menaces had a way of not being seen unless they wanted to be seen. Maybe a display of force would scare away any demons. Hopefully.

Either way, Mills was one of his own. He would do what he could to help her.

But how in the world did Ichabod Crane, errant Revolutionary War soldier, know how to operate a chainsaw?

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Ichabod grinned despite the sudden darkness. He hefted the modern machine easily, getting a feel for its weight and balance, carefully keeping the rotating blade angled away from him. The humming power of it was exhilarating. After several false starts, he'd managed to get it running.

'Where is Abbie?' he thought, 'She's going to be so impressed!'

Right on cue, Abbie came running through the doorway but she tripped over something on the top step and fell down the three short steps into the garage, catching herself on her hands and knees. The matchbox went skidding across the cold cement floor, the one lit match blowing out.

"Ow!" she exclaimed.

"Lieutenant! Are you okay?" Ichabod demanded.

If he hadn't been holding the chainsaw, he might have been able to catch her. He'd never seen Abbie take a fall before, or really do anything that could be considered clumsy, even in the dark.

"I'm okay," she answered, promptly picking herself up and brushing herself off, feeling embarrassed. Her knees stung but she was otherwise unhurt.

"Crane, I dropped the matchbox. Did you see it?" Abbie knelt and waved her hands along the floor, searching for the box.

"I'm afraid I can't see anything," he said.

"Be careful," he added, stepping away from where he heard her moving. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally injure Miss Mills with the vibrating chainsaw in his hands.

"We need light," Ichabod said unhelpfully, then explained his plan, "I'm going to try and cut a hole in the garage door."

"I can't find it," Abbie gave up and stood, feeling her way to the back of the garage where she had some shelves next to the small workbench. Reaching to the top shelf she fumbled around and found what she wanted, a Coleman lantern. She found the little button on the side and a cool light filled the room, casting jumping shadows about them.

"That's better," she said, looking around.

There was a thick vine running across the top step, curling up around the doorframe she had just come through. No wonder she'd tripped.

The matchbox had slid over into the corner, by the snow shovel. She quickly picked it up and stuck it in her pocket.

"Bring the light over here, please," Ichabod said anxiously.

Abbie held the lantern up beside him.

"Crane, are you sure you know how to use that?" she asked.

Her incredulous expression was a far cry from the look of surprise and admiration that he'd been hoping for.

She motioned for the chainsaw, "Maybe I should..."

"Lieutenant, do you not recall the day you left me behind to attend a staff meeting, took the keys to the Archives with you-"

"Do we have to bring this up again now?" Abbie interrupted, growing impatient.

She'd said she was sorry.

"-and I spent a good seven hours watching a program called 'Ax Men' on the History Channel?"

"Whatever, just go for it," there was no arguing with him when he got that haughty determined look in his eyes.

"If I avoid hitting these metal framing bars that go across, I should be able to cut out a section large enough to crawl through," Ichabod detailed his plan.

Another series of loud creaking, crunching sounds came from the direction of the house. That basement door wouldn't hold up too much longer.

"Less talking, more escaping, please!" Abbie was keen to put some distance between them and the source of those noises.

Ichabod plunged the buzzing chainsaw into the garage door, hesitantly at first but then with more control as he felt the saw bite into the wood, slicing a vertical gash into the door. He withdrew the saw then started on a horizontal cut, splinters and sawdust falling around his feet.

Abbie watched his progress but kept looking back towards the house, alert for any approaching danger. She glanced back at Ichabod, who was making quick work of the door, and held the light a little higher so he could see better.

Glancing back towards the open door to the house, her eyes stopped on the second shelf at the back of the garage. Her free hand closed tightly on the matchbox in her pocket.

Ichabod didn't see her eyes narrow and her expression harden.

These past few weeks that she'd spent with Crane, fighting evil witches, nightmare monsters, assorted undead horsemen and other menacing creatures, they hadn't really been fighting at all. They'd been running, narrowly escaping utter disaster at every turn. Really, she'd been running from evil for most of her life, ever since that day in the woods that had changed her and Jenny's lives.

She was tired of running, tired of being afraid, tired of mourning her lost friends, of seeing the heartbreak writ plainly across Crane's face every time they learned something new about his lost family.

It was time to fight back.

Abbie placed the lantern on the ground a few feet from where Crane stood and strode towards the back shelf.

"What," Ichabod turned his head to look at her, but kept cutting, "What are you doing?"

"Keep at it, Crane."

"Lieutenant?" he called. He only had to make one more long cut to finish a ragged rectangle.

Vines had grown up, crisscrossing the outside surface of the garage door. Like the vines that had so thoroughly infiltrated his friend Lachlan's mansion, these spewed thick red blood when broken. In the dim light he could see the dark substance dripping down from where the saw had cut the white door, mixing with the sawdust and pooling around his boots. His hands were splattered in blood but he was careful not to lose his grip on the chainsaw.

"Lieutenant! I'm almost through!" he shouted, "Where are you going?"

"I have to do this, Crane! I'll be right there!" she answered from behind him, reaching up to grab the item resting on the wooden shelf.

Her hand wrapped around the handle of the red plastic gasoline container. Good, it was full. She unscrewed the cap and placed the container on the ground at her feet and reached for the second one. Deftly unscrewing the second cap, letting the pungent smell of gasoline fill the small space, Abbie glanced back at Ichabod.

He'd cut the outlines of a decent sized hole into the garage door and now, holding the chainsaw away from his body, kicked at the section he'd cut, trying to dislodge it.

Abbie spotted a small flashlight in the corner of the workbench and grabbed it. She all but ran back into the house, careful to step over the thick vine spreading across the top step.

Using the small light to guide her, Abbie turned first into the kitchen. She hardly recognized the interior of her own house, the place she'd lived for the past five years, now that dark vines were branching across the walls, cutting the corners of doorways, creeping out along the floor.

Holding the flashlight in her mouth for a moment, Abbie quickly turned the dials on the old stove, forcing the gas jets all the way open. She titled the red plastic container and poured gasoline across the floor as she backed out of the kitchen. Hastily, she waved her arm in large arches, splattering gasoline across the living room, over the face of her bookshelf, her bedroom door.

Then she came to the door leading to the basement, with the heavy couch still firmly in front of the door, albeit a few inches further away from the door than where she and Crane had left it. The door was bowed out a bit in the middle and was starting to splinter around the doorknob.

The whole house creaked and groaned. It was the sound of dry wood straining, protesting an unwanted, unnatural strain.

"LIEUTENANT!!!" Ichabod shouted from the garage.

"Hold on!" Abbie yelled back, emptying the rest of the gasoline all over the basement door and the couch, and then tossed the container aside.

"Lieutenant!" Ichabod yelled again, wishing she would hurry back to him.

He hated being separated from her at times like this.

Abbie ran back to the garage, fairly leaping through the doorway so she wouldn't trip again. She landed hard and scrambled over to where she'd left the second red plastic container.

Ichabod had opened a hole in the garage door. Errant vines kept creeping around the edges, trying to close it back up, but he kept them at bay with the whining chainsaw. Blood was now splattered all over him. It was starting to gum up the rotating blade.

"What are you doing?" He'd seen the small picture of a flame on the red plastic containers earlier, when he first found the chainsaw, but couldn't quite connect that to his partner's reckless actions now.

"This is gasoline, highly flammable," Abbie said as she liberally doused the doorway to the house, the back shelves and wooden workbench, and finally the side wall that was shared between the garage and the house, for good measure.

"Please hurry!" Ichabod implored, looking at her desperately.

"I'm coming!" Abbie dumped the last bit of gasoline out onto the floor and tossed the container aside.

The fumes stung her throat, her eyes.

"Lieutenant!" Ichabod yelled for what felt like the hundredth time that night, "We must move! Now!"

Finally, Abbie was at his side again.

"Go!" he urged, "I'm right behind you."

Abbie focused on the ragged opening cut into the garage door. All that work, and he couldn't have made it any lower?

She dove through the opening and tumbled quite ungracefully onto the driveway. She staggered out of the way, filling her lungs with the cool night air.

"Crane, come on!"

"Stand back!"

She obeyed, just in time. Ichabod tossed the chainsaw out through the opening. It sailed through the air and crashed along the pavement with an awful mechanical shriek.

Suddenly they heard a loud, sharp crack and a horrible crash. That was it. The basement door had given way and the evil tree monster was free.

"Crane!" Abbie yelled his name, but he was already moving.

Ichabod copied Abbie and dove head first through the opening, intending to slow his motion with a nice forward roll, but his pant leg got caught on a broken vine and he crashed onto the ground in a confusion of limbs, barely managing to scrape his legs free before more vines could close around his boots.

If she hadn't been in such a panic she probably would have laughed out loud at Crane's comically bungled egress. Instead she winced, because that had to hurt, and grabbed his arms and helped him regain his feet. Together they staggered a few steps back from the garage, finally breathing fresh air again.

Abbie looked up. The entire surface of the garage, no – the whole house, was overgrown with dry, twisted branches, slowly shifting in the darkness.

Ichabod took another step backwards.

Abbie pulled the matchbox out of her pocket, flipped it open, withdrew a single match. The cold, misty air made her shiver. Her heart was pounding too loud in her ears.

Something blocked out the light from the camp lantern, still sitting on the ground on the other side of the garage door. For a second there was a shadow, the silhouette of a roughly man-shaped form.

Abbie struck the match.

Soundlessly, two tree branch arms extended from the cut opening in the door, grasping empty air, followed by a misshapen head, half cracked open like an egg that's been struck against the edge of a frying pan.

The match spun through the air, closing the distance between Abbie's outstretched hand and the monster's awful face.

Ichabod's arms clamped around her middle and she was yanked back hard and spun around. They fell to the ground, Ichabod using his body to shield her as best he could.

With a roaring WHOOOSH, the monster was engulfed in bright flames. It recoiled, falling back inside the garage.

Abbie pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. She grabbed Crane's collar, trying to pull him up.

"Run," she gasped, then finding her voice, commanded, "RUN!"

They ran down the driveway and into the street. Ichabod faltered, stunned at the sight of flames swallowing up the vine-covered garage, spreading quickly across the whole front of the house.

"What is," he tried to ask, but was cut off.

"Don't look back!" Abbie fumbled for his hand and kept running.

Together they sprinted across the street, across the vacant lot on the other side, stumbling over rocks and loose clumps of dirt in the foggy night. They came to a small creek at the edge of the woods.

"Here! Get down!"

Abbie jumped down the bank and fell into the creek, gasping as she hit the bitterly cold water. Ichabod followed suit.

A massive BOOM shattered the night and a wave of heat rolled over the two huddled Witnesses.

For a second Ichabod was back on the battlefield, surrounded by cannon blasts, panicking horses, barked orders, and musket fire. He blinked and the flashback was gone. He was kneeling in a cold creek bed in the future Sleepy Hollow, fairly soaked and muddy. He looked at the young Lieutenant Abigail Mills to see if she was alright.

He stood slowly beside her, asking, "Are you hurt?"

When she didn't answer, he turned to follow her gaze.

The cozy house at the end of the lane, the place that Abbie had made her home, was gutted, roaring flames leaping high into the sky, so bright now that he could hardly look at it.

His voice held a tinge of awe, "My God...Lieutenant, what have you done?"

He gazed in horror at the utter destruction before them. He'd never seen anything like it.

Abbie wiped the splattered mud from her eyes.

"Alright! That's it! Right there!" She turned her face to look up at him, her features lit in the fiery glow.

He felt a wave of relief wash over him. Surely now was not the appropriate time for a fist-bump. No, looking closer, her expression was not one of elation; rather her smile was fiercely triumphant, tinged with bitterness.

Abbie took a few steps closer towards her burning house and raised her fist.

"This is it, Moloch! Do you hear me now? I'm not afraid anymore!" she shouted, gesturing wildly, voice hoarse, but she couldn't stop, "How do you like it now, Moloch?! Damn you! Damn you straight to Hell!"

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To be Continued...

Preview: Will Captain Irving and his team ever get there? Will Abbie regret her decision to strike back at Moloch by burning down/blowing up her own house?