Installment 2
“We have pigs that we can’t afford to loose.”
“What?” Ray asked.
“Nothin’.” Ed swallowed the down the bile that was rising like phlegm in his throat.
Ray stopped to pick up a fallen tree branch as thick as his arm. He broke back the smaller offshoots so that it was smooth as a walking stick. Before Ray could get close enough to explore the carcass with the tip of the stick, the stench rose up in a noxious cloud and enveloped them both. Ray and Ed gagged, fighting back the overwhelming urge to vomit.
“Ah, Christ!” Ray leaned over and emptied what was left of his breakfast into the tall grass beside the bank, letting the stick drop to the ground.
“Gimme that.” Ed snatched up the stick and covered his mouth and nose with the bottom of his shirt.
Using the shirt as a filter, and breathing shallowly, Ed took small steps until he was close enough to turn the rotted pig over with the end of the stick. Because of the water and the angle it had rested at, it flopped over easily. Ed gagged when he noticed that a rancid hunk of flesh stuck to the stick like pork on a spit. He stared in shock at the deformed thing, it’s front and back legs horribly elongated. Then he noticed the hair.
“Sweet Jesus.” Ray, some five feet behind Ed, began to weep. “Oh, God, Ed, it’s a body. IT’S A DEAD BOY.”
And Ray was right. This was no dead pig, diseased or otherwise. Ed could see that now. He stood stock still, eyes open wide and unblinking. His mind crawled sluggishly over the obstacles, the awful truth and sick horror of it, but he could see that it was the body of a young boy of perhaps twelve; hands and feet tied trussed in front of him with now-rusted baling wire.
The dead boy had longish blond hair that was waving slowly about in the current of the stream, his head submerged in less than a foot of water. His eyes were open and staring, blank but staring, and Ed saw that they were a watery, pale blue very like his mother’s. A dark putrid hole had been bored into the middle of the youth’s forehead. Ed knew it was a bullet hole.
“Run, go get Gene. Quick!”
Ray ran. He ran so fast that the words were scarcely out of Ed’s mouth before he was rounding the first bend in the stream. Ray ran the quarter mile over the rugged stream bank, his heart beating painfully in his chest. He ran so fast the tears from his eyes were pushed straight back into his ears. Ray ran fast while Ed waited alone with the floating corpse of a dead boy.
