They were burning again.
The afternoon breeze turned fetid, thick and foul, and summer lost its luster; it stank of death, of decay, of gasoline and diesel oil, of charred human flesh.
Jess McCall stood on his front porch and looked out over unharvested farmland. The fields were deserted. There were no tractors there; no big John Deere combines, no hired men on their way to the orchard to pick this year's fruit. An unnatural silence had fallen over the valley; interrupted occasionally by the sporadic pop-pop-popping of gunfire.
He stared past the two big elm trees that stood in the front yard. A column of black smoke rose in the distance. It was a sight that had become common in the last week or so. Units of soldiers were out there, burning the bodies of the dead. The smell grew familiar, though no less unpleasant, as the fighting moved closer to the valley. Jess sniffed the air with disgust. Not once in sixty-three years had he experienced anything like this.
A war was being fought on American soil; the first in generations and it was unlike any that had ever been waged in the history of mankind.
A war between the living and the dead.
He had watched the reports on television for a week now, but the media seemed just as confused as everyone else. Some speculated that thinning of the ozone layer had caused the strange phenomenon while others, especially the very religious, insisted that God's final Judgment was at hand. A group of scientists out in California were insisting that a new virus, brought back by a NASA probe to Venus, had somehow infected the brains of the recently dead and returned them to life. No one offered an ironclad explanation as to why, on August 23, the unburied dead had begun to walk; driven by a lust to kill living humans, to devour their flesh.
Such thoughts were short lived.
At dawn on the third day, Jess had been in the kitchen fixing Eva's breakfast. Since her stroke she had been unable to do much for herself. He didn't mind looking after her. After nearly forty years of marriage, it was the least he could do. Two strangers came staggering up the hill behind the house. He watched them through the window and could see there was something not right about them. The radio on the counter, which had played nothing but static all morning, suddenly crackled to life...
...DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONTACT THESE INDIVIDUALS AS THEY MAY BE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. DO NOT ALLOW FAMILY MEMBERS TO COME IN CONTACT WITH THEM...
...Jess' first thoughts were for Eva, alone and helpless in her bed upstairs. He had to protect her at all cost. He took the Remington 870 from its place in the gun rack above the fireplace. The finely crafted piece felt good in his hands. The weapon had been a gift from his oldest son Bob. Jess wondered briefly how his boys were faring. Bob and his wife and their kids lived in San Antonio. Jake, his youngest, lived about thirty miles north, in the state capitol. Jake had married a coloured woman way back when and had been disowned by the family. In spite of their differences, Jess wished they were here with him now. He was just an old man, with a sick wife to boot, and the presence of two able-bodied men would increase his chances greatly. His hands trembled as he worked the Remington's slide; his heartbeat pounded in his ears as he stepped out onto the porch to confront the intruders...
...THEY ARE TO BE AVOIDED AT ALL COST. THEY ARE BEYOND REASON. THEY...
...they were horrible to look at, a man and a woman; their clothing ripped and bloody. Her face, mangled and bruised, one eye missing, the other askew; his right arm severed at the elbow, white bone glistening in the early sunlight, his face a mask of slack, single-minded stupidity. Fat, green flies buzzed around their open wounds and Jess thought he could see something white and squirming in the woman's vacant eye socket. Both reeked of spoiled meat and ruptured bowel. Their hands clawed at the air as they reached out to him...
...MAY BE INCAPACITATED BY A SHARP BLOW TO THE HEAD, OR A BULLET TO THE SKULL. THESE THE WORDS OF SHERIFF...
...every instinct told him not to shoot; these were just people, victims of an accident, reaching out to him for help. But how could someone so horribly injured be walking, much less asking for help? The Remington kicked twice in the early morning hours of August 24th...
...the radio played on...
...DRAG THEM TO THE STREET AND… AND BURN THEM. THEY'RE JUST DEAD FLESH...
...he couldn't burn them. Jess had seen first hand what fire could do to the human body...
Back in the late sixties he had taken Eva and the boys up to Hanford to watch the stock car races. A double set of ConRail tracks ran behind the bleachers and intersected old route 12. Two elderly couples in a Ford Fairlane had broken down smack-dab in the middle of the tracks and the nine o'clock express out of Cambridge bore down on them. Jess and some of the other men had run down to help. Three of the passengers had gotten out safely. The fourth, an obnoxiously obese woman in the back seat, was trapped inside. Her seat-belt had jammed. Before anyone could fetch a knife to cut her loose; that big diesel ploughed broadside into the car. The wreckage was flung thirty feet through the air, bursting into flame at its apex, before crashing into a field beyond the tracks. When the flames died down, they could see what remained of the unfortunate woman. Because of her excess body fat she burned ferociously; her flesh sizzling and popping, and where her hide had charred and split, rivulets of flaming grease trickled to the ground...
No, he couldn't burn those people. There was something not quite right about that, but to leave them laying in the open where birds and the insects could get at them, seemed equally disrespectful. He tried calling the sheriff's office but all he got as a recorded message stating that all lines were busy. He knew he could not leave the bodies laying in the yard. Bile rose in his throat as he dragged them, first the woman; then the man, behind the barn and covered them with a tarp. Afterward, he returned to the house and stood in the living room, thinking of his predicament and wondered what to do next...
That had been a week ago.
The sound of traffic snapped Jess from his introspection. He looked toward the road that ran beyond the field in front of the house. A column of olive drab National Guard trucks came chugging around the bend, heading for Cambridge. There were a few police and civilian vehicles among them. One of the cruisers broke convoy and turned into the long gravel driveway. The car shimmered in the heat and distance, but Jess could make out the red and blue reflections of sunlight off the lightbar on its roof. As it drew closer he could see that there were five, or six, men inside. One of them would be Floyd Carpenter, the county sheriff.
A feeling of dread swept over him. Jess turned and walked into the house. He took the Remington from the its usual place and assured himself that it was loaded. He knew that Carpenter was coming to offer help but, after a week of holding his own, Jess suddenly felt he could do better by himself. He leaned the gun against the wall just inside the front door and hoped he wouldn't need it.
The screen door closed behind him with a loud crack as he stepped back onto the porch. The burning smell was stronger.
Carpenter parked the cruiser in the shade of one of the big elms and climbed out. He was a big, heavyset man and moved with much effort. The others got out and stretched their travel weary limbs. Aside from the sheriff, there were four others; all dressed in hunter's camouflage clothing, all sporting high-powered rifles. Shiny badges gleamed on the fronts of their shirts. The fat sheriff spat a wad of tobacco in the dust as he waddled up to the porch.
"McCall," he said. His bushy moustache wiggled like a caterpillar when he spoke, "Sorry it took so long to get to you. We've been mighty busy these last few days."
"So I hear," Jess replied.
"You have any trouble?"
At once Jess thought of the bodies behind the barn. After his first attempt to contact the authorities he had given up. Now it seemed better if he said nothing at all.
"No. No trouble, Sheriff," he smiled and hoped he sounded convincing. "Haven't seen or heard a thing, other than your boys out there shooting."
Floyd chuckled. One flabby hand reached into his vest pocket and came out with a tin of Skoul. He tucked a large pinch of it way back in his cheek.
"You've heard about what's happening, haven't you?"
Jess shrugged. He'd be surprised if the whole damn country, the world for that matter, hadn't been made aware in one way or the other.
That was one of the things Jess didn't like about Carpenter; big-time city cop come south to teach the hillbillies a thing or two about running their affairs.
He figured Carpenter had him pegged as just another good 'ol boy; too old to farm the land, too stupid to sell it to the developers.
"I heard, Floyd. Don't you think most folks have by now?"
"You would think so." the sheriff said sarcastically. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his brow.
A trio of Huey gunships, flying in V formation, swooped low over the farmhouse. The backwash from their rotors kicked up a cloud of dust in the yard. Jess flinched but neither Carpenter, nor his men, seemed to notice. The men by the cruiser smoked cigarettes and talked quietly amongst themselves. They seemed anxious to move on.
Two of the whirlybirds flew out over the main body of the truck convoy and hovered, providing aircover. The third flew further south and began to circle above the tail of the retreating convoy.
"We've cleared out most of this end of the county," Carpenter said after a moment. "Ran into to some trouble down by Pike State Park. Seems a lot of people were camping there when this thing started. Most of them are dead." He spat out a mouthful of tobacco juice. "The Governor has called the Guard back to help out up in Cambridge. That leaves just me and the local militia to keep things straight out here."
He looked Jess squarely in the eye. "Without state support, we've got too much ground to cover. We're moving everyone into town."
Jess shifted nervously; wooden planks creaked beneath his feet. Eva was in no shape to travel. Not in her condition. Town was the last place she needed to be.
"I can't be moving my wife just now," he explained. "She had another one of her seizures and Doc said-"
"Doc," Carpenter interrupted, "is down at the rescue station as we speak, tending the wounded. If your wife is in poor health that's where she needs to be."
"I can take care of my own," Jess said, louder than he had intended.
The men from the posse looked up from their conversation. Two of them approached, ready for trouble. Carpenter waved them off. He turned back to Jess.
"The President declared martial law this morning, McCall," he said. "That means local law enforcement is in control of its own jurisdiction. I could take you in by force if need be, but that would mean having to personally deal with that sick wife of yours." He spat tobacco in the dust at his feet. "I'm not in the mood for that. I've still got a patrol out there covering my ass. When they come by here you had better have her, and whatever shit you need to take care of her, ready to go."
The fat sheriff didn't wait for Jess' reply. He turned on his heel and waddled toward his posse. The men climbed into the cruiser and drove off. Jess watched them go. After a while, the last of the military vehicles passed by and the sound of the helicopters faded in the distance.
He had selfishly let her suffering go on for far too long.
He dragged them into a clear spot in the yard and doused them with gasoline. Guilt tugged at his heart for having left them lay for so long. He tossed a match on the heap and it went up with a- woosh. Unlike the hapless woman from the train accident, there was no sickening, juicy sound as they burned; only an occasional dry pop, like cordwood on a bonfire. Their flesh blackened and peeled and he hoped they were at peace.
In the distance; movement, a flash of colour. At the base of the hill, about a hundred yards distant, several figures staggered from the woods that separated his farm from the McCloskey place.
Several were dressed in military fatigues and his first impression was that they were part of Carpenter's rear-guard forces. Their slow, shambling way of walking told him different. Obviously the fat sheriff had failed to clear the area as well as he had thought. More figures broke from the treeline. Maybe a dozen.
Maybe more.
It was increasingly harder to see as a thick haze settled over the land.
"Jesse?" she said, her words thick; slurred. The last seizure had left her paralysed on the right side of her body. Droll filtered from the corner of her mouth. "Jesse, what's that smell?"
Bedroom curtains rose and fell on the breeze. He had opened the window to better ventilate the room. The smell of corruption hung heavy in the air. From downstairs came the sound of smashing glass.
The kitchen door. Moaning and heavy footfalls.
"It's nothing, my darlin'" Jess whispered, as he reached for the matches on the night stand. Fire, he supposed, could be a dreadful killer; but it also purified and made way for new life.
"Negative," Lichter said into the microphone he held in one big hand. His wide-brimmed deputy hat sheltered his face from most of the wafting cinders. "The whole place is going up. No sign of the old man or his wife. We could go in and take a look, but from what I can see there's ten, maybe twenty dead-fucks wandering around up there. You want us to check it out?"
The men in the posse shifted nervously. It was getting dark and there was one hell of a fire licking at their asses. They were anxious to move on to safer quarters. All afternoon they had been playing hide and seek with the walking dead now, with all the smoke in the air, God only knew from where they would be hit from next. They had lost two men in the last hour; no one was anxious to be next.
"No, Deke," came Carpenter's voice over the radio, "get your boys in here. There's some trouble over at the rescue station and I need all the warm bodies I can get."
The men breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Roger," Licther said, as he returned the handset to its place on the backpack unit of the man who was carrying it.
"You heard him, people. Let's get going."
They moved up the road, fading like ghosts in the gathering darkness.
When they were gone; there was nothing but the fire, and the smell of the burning.
- THE END -