Cautiously, Jubal opened the gate of the split-rail fence. "Come on, but keep your eyes open. Let's get 'er done, then get out. At the first sign of trouble, run like hell."
Cassie regarded him with disapproval. She'd never much cared for his cussing.
"Sorry." He led the way down the center row of the cornfield.
The stalks were tall and plentiful, but like everything else on the Ridge, they simply weren't right. The leaves were a peculiar orange color and the stalks themselves were a streaky yellowish-pink. The corn silk sprouting from the head of each fat ear was not silky and pale, but coarse and jet black in hue. And there was a smell in the air. Something putrid, like decay.
They said nothing as they quietly made their way along the center aisle. Jubal went first, scythe in hand, followed by Cassie and Lenora, with their cutlery and buckets. Seth brought up the rear, holding the wooden handle of his hoe tightly in his fists. The ten-year-old stepped on something brittle. It crackled beneath his boots, drawing a hard look from his father. Seth looked down to see bones scattered across the earth. The dusty bones of Ol' Rusty, stripped clean of flesh.
Silently, Jubal pointed toward two large stalks ahead. Cassie and Lenora separated, preparing to do their part. Off to the east a crow – or something that might have been one once – cawed loudly. The four held their breaths. When nothing happened, they continued. The womenfolk neared their appointed stalk, knife and hatchet held aloft, ready for the harvest.
The long, orange leaves of the cornstalks began to flutter. But there was no breeze that afternoon.
"Now!" hollered Jubal.
Cassie brought her hand axe down, separating a fat, yellow-pink ear from its place on the stalk.
It screamed as it dropped into the bucket.
Hands shaking, Lenora did the same. She had to hack several times with the butcher knife before her ear came loose. It missed the bucket and laid on the ground, bucking and wiggling, mewing like a baby kitten taken from its mother's tit.
"Pick it up!" demanded Jubal. A long leaf from a nearby stalk swung toward him, swiftly, barely missing his right shoulder.
"No!" screamed Lenora. Like a slug, the ear was slithering away into a neighboring row. She clenched her eyes shut tightly and tossed her knife and bucket aside. "I can't do it!"
Cassie's hatchet flashed again and again. Three more ears dropped into her bucket. They rattled and rolled inside, attempting to escape. "Snap out of it, daughter!" she called sharply.
The sound of shrieking vegetation was more than the sixteen-year-old could stand. She pressed her palms against her ears, trying to seal out the mayhem. Tears squeezed from beneath her dark lashes and trickled down her face.
Suddenly, the stalks attacked. The leaves – their edges razor sharp – slashed and hacked at the four invaders. Jubal cried out as one sliced across his forearm, drawing blood. "Get a few more, Cassie, and then let's get back to the gate!" Another leaf, low down on a stalk, nicked his left ankle, trying to hamstring him.
Cassie lopped off a couple more. A slender leaf slashed out, drawing a thin line of blood across her forehead. She stumbled backward, nearly dropping the bucket. But she held fast… for her family's sake.
"Papa!" screamed Seth. "My eye! My eye!"
Jubal turned to see his son standing in the center of the corn row. He had dropped his hoe. His hand was clamped tightly against the left side of his face. Blood trickled between the cracks of his fingers.
"I'm coming, boy!" called the farmer. Angrily, he swung his scythe and brought one of the stalks down. It shrieked shrilly, bucking and rolling in agony.
"Let's go, Lenora!" demanded Cassie.
Her daughter was rooted to the spot, however. "I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" she screamed hysterically.
Her mother slapped her violently across the face. "Snap out of it, girl! Stay here and these things will cut you into a dozen pieces! Now gather up your things and get going!"
Together, Cassie and Lenora ran. Jubal had picked up Seth and slung him over his left shoulder. As he slashed and hacked at the vengeful cornstalks, he felt something warm and wet dampen the back of his shirt. He knew it must be his son's blood… or the gelatinous contents of his ruptured eye.
Before long they finally made it through that awful gauntlet of deadly vegetation. They didn't stop at the gate. They continued to run, past the smokehouse and the barn, to the two-room log cabin they called home.
Jubal set Seth down on the front porch swing. "Let me take a look, son," he said. Gently, he pried the boy's blood-stained fingers away from his face.
"Dammit!" he cursed in spite of himself. One of the leaves had sliced the boy's eyeball cleanly in half. It was no more than a deflated and bloody sack within the crater of his eye socket now.
"It hurts, Papa!" cried the boy. "It hurts so bad!"
"Cassie! Get something to fix him up, will you?" he said.
But his wife was already running through the cabin door. First she headed toward the woodstove. A big kettle of water was boiling on top, ready and waiting. She dumped the bucketload of mewing ears into the scalding water, feeling a pang of cruel satisfaction in doing so. When they hit the water, they began to shriek wildly.
Cassie turned and went to a bureau drawer next to her and Jubal's brass bed. She took peroxide and gauze, and an eye patch that Grandma Hayes had used after her cataract surgery shortly before she had passed away last spring.
When she reached the porch, Cassie shut the door behind her. She looked over to see Lenora sitting on the front steps, rocking back and forth, her hands plastered tightly over her eyes. She reminded her of those confounded monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The sixteen-year-old seemed to spend a lot of her time like that lately.
"Let me tend to him, Jubal," she said calmly. She knelt and examined her son's ruined eye. It grieved her to no end to see that the wound was permanent… that he would be blind on that side for the rest of his life. As she applied the peroxide and secured a wad of cotton gauze to the nasty injury with the eye patch, Cassie felt the sting of her own injury. She looked over at Jubal and saw that he had been sliced by the angry leaves of the stalks perhaps half a dozen times. "Lordy Mercy, Jubal, they've cut us both! What if we…?"
Jubal stared at her. "What if we what? All turn into a family of walking vegetables? Woman, sometimes I believe you're getting a mite touched in the head!"
"I've seen stranger things happen in these mountains lately," was all she said.
Jubal found that he couldn't argue the point with her. So had he… much stranger things.
Inside the cabin, they could hear the ears of corn cooking in the big kettle. They screamed shrilly like newborn babies being scalded to death.
The Hayes family sat silently on the front porch for a long time, until that awful commotion faded and grew silent.
Then they went in to supper.
They tried to eat the fat ears of boiled corn with salt and the last of their butter. But when they bit into the kernels, their teeth drew blood.
That evening, Jubal and Cassie sat on the front porch, watching the sun set.
They once took pleasure in that simple act… sitting in their rocking chairs and watching the dusk approach in brilliant hues of purple and pink. But now those colors seemed starkly unnatural, as though tainted by the aftereffects of the Burn.
And that wasn't the only thing that had changed. The bluish-gray mist that had once given the Smoky Mountains their namesake was now a peculiar golden color. Every now and then the wind shifted, causing the mist to swirl and sparkle like a thousand tiny fireflies.
"It's the Devil's handiwork," Cassie said to no one in particular.
Jubal sat there for a long moment, thinking. "No," he replied. "And not God's either. It's all man's doing. The spoils of his stupidity and pride."
Cassie chuckled humorlessly. "Pride goeth before the fall." She stared into the mist as though hypnotized. "I do believe this is the end times."
/> Jubal refrained from commenting on that point. He had never been able to understand the book of Revelations. Too much symbolism and not enough straight talk.
They lapsed into silence. It hung between them like a wall of brick and mortar. Jubal gradually realized that it was mostly constructed of his own guilt.
"Hon…" he began, "I'm sorry about the way I spoke today. About praying and such."
Cassie sat there and said nothing, in that stubborn way of hers.
"I know how you always set store in your church work and all."
Cassie said nothing. Her church was dead. They had gathered in its sanctuary directly after the Burn. They had prayed, planned, tried to band together and make the best of it. But soon grim reality had taken the place of faith and good intentions, and the flock had scattered. Now the church house was empty… except for an evil that once had been their beloved pastor. Something that hung from the rafters, dark and monstrous, spouting obscenities and blaspheming the name of the Lord.
"I don't expect you to believe, Jubal, not being a church-going man and all," she told him. Cassie Hayes sighed. "I reckon it's too late for you to even start now."
The way she said that, to his face, saddened him deeply.
They sat there quietly for a while longer. Something past the tall pines, down in the valley, howled mournfully. Neither of them could identify exactly what it was.
"Jubal," said Cassie. "What're we gonna do about the young'uns?"
The farmer shook his head. "I don't know."
"If they don't eat, they'll die," she told him. "And I'd do anything to prevent that from happening." Her eyes grew grim. "I'd go as far as give my own life for the lives of my children."
Jubal turned and looked at her. The way she had said that chilled him to the bone. "What're you getting at, Cassie?"
She didn't look him in the eyes when she said it. "It'd be simple enough, husband. Put a bullet in the back of my head while I sleep tonight. The three of you should be able to live off…"
He bounded out of his rocker, cutting her off in mid-sentence. "No, ma'am! We ain't going down that road. I'd rather we all starve than do what you're suggesting. Ain't gonna be no sick sinfulness done betwixt us. Not like what goes on down in the valley."
Jubal thought of the sorry state that the world had come to lately. A traveling guitar-player named John had stopped by the cabin a week or so ago. What he had told them had been dark and discouraging. How folks were casting aside the laws of God and man, and doing the unspeakable. The fellow had rested for only a short while, then departed into the mountains, strumming that silver-stringed guitar of his.
Jubal held out his hands to his wife and she took them. Slowly, she rose from her rocker and they embraced. "Jubal," she whispered, her face buried against the fabric of his shirt. "I don't mean to be such a worry to you."
"We've got to be strong," he told her. "For ourselves and the young'uns."
She began to cry. "It's so confounded hard."
He held her tighter. "I know."
Cassie pulled away and regarded his face; long and handsome, his mustache showing hints of gray among the black hairs. "I love you, Jubal."
"And I love you more than life itself, woman," he said with a smile.
The two kissed, then held each other on the porch a while longer. Inside, they could hear Seth and Lenora talking quietly, playing a game of Rook. Their bodies yearned to respond to each other in that intimate way that had blessed them with their son and daughter. But they knew that was impossible. In the uncertainty of those dark days, they feared the monstrosity that the union of his seed and her egg might bring about.
"Papa?"
Jubal awoke in total darkness, startled. "Son? Are you all right?"
"I'm okay," said Seth. "Was just thinking, that's all."
The farmer was surprised that Seth was even awake at all. They had given him some strong pain medicine the dentist down in Pigeon Forge had given Cassie when she'd had some wisdom teeth cut out.
"Thinking about what?" he asked. There was no outside light in the cabin at all. Jubal had constructed sturdy wooden shutters that secured from the inside. It had been necessary when things outside began to get out of hand.
The boy hesitated. "Did the preacherman lie?"
"Lie? In what way?"
"You know, about evolution and such. He said it was just a bunch of bull. Stuff that non-believers made up. But it was a lie. Ain't that what's happening now… here on the mountain?"
Jubal felt Cassie roll over in bed and knew that she'd been privy to their conversation since it had started. He also knew that she didn't like it one dadblamed bit. For matters of faith and religion, Seth should have been asking his ma the questions. But Jubal reckoned the boy had deliberately left her out of it. If he had sought her advice, he would have likely received her by-the-Good-Book sermon on the evils of Darwin's theory.
"Well, to tell the truth," began Jubal carefully, "I ain't no scholar on science or divinity. But, yes, son, that's what's happening here. Not the kind of evolution that happens over thousands or millions of years, but a sped up version of it."
"And it's due to the radiation? From those bombs?"
Jubal considered it for a moment. "I reckon that's right. For some reason, it's settling high, up here in the mountaintops and not in the valley below. It's causing nature to turn itself inside out… the critters, the plants, the insects… they're all being twisted into something unnatural. Into things that the good Lord didn't intend to be."
"Papa?"
"Yes, son?" he asked, but he could already sense the question that was coming next.
"Will we change too?" There was a waver of fear in his young voice.
Jubal sighed. "I can't rightly say. It ain't happened yet, but maybe it could take some extra time with us… we being so dadblamed ornery and all."
Seth laughed softly. "Well, I hope it don't happen. I'm happy with the way I am right now."
"Me, too." Jubal considered something. "Seth, I was figuring to hike across the ridge tomorrow to Amos Sterling's place. Maybe see if he's got some supplies he could loan us. You think you'd be up to going with me?"
"Sure, Pa," said the boy eagerly. "My eye's aching a bit, but I reckon I'd be okay."
"Then we'll head out at first light," his father told him. "Just you and me."
The bedsprings creaked as Cassie rolled over again. "I suggest y'all hush up and get some shut-eye or you'll not be getting up till noon."
"Yes, ma'am," said the boy respectfully and spoke no more that night.
Jubal laid there for a long moment, attempting to get back to sleep. It was difficult after their talk, though.
"Jubal?" whispered Cassie beside him.
"Yes, dear?"
"Be careful tomorrow," she said. "There's no telling what's roaming around in those woods."
"I'll take my shotgun, just to be on the safe side," he promised.
Cassie sighed and rolled over again. Jubal wanted to go back to sleep just as swiftly, but for him it was a long time coming.
The pale light of dawn found Jubal and Seth taking a deer path over the crest of Hayes Ridge. It was the first time father and son had been out in the wilderness together in a long while. The last time had been a near-disastrous hunting trip they had taken a month or so after the Burn. They had been hunting a big buck when they had reached a clearing and found the animal standing there, waiting for them. It had been altered from its former state somehow… in a horrible way. Its coat had a strange green tint to it and its antlers had sprouted into a crazy tangle of razor-sharp spikes. Why there must have been more than seventy-five or eighty points in all! But what had startled them the most was the animal's eyes. They had bulged from their sockets and were bloodshot and crazy. Heavy yellow mucus had poured from the deer's nostrils as it pawed at the ground like an angry bull and charged them. Jubal had emptied his twelve-gauge into the beast, but it hadn't even slowed it down. It chased them halfway down the mounta
in before they finally escaped its fury. But they knew it was still up there somewhere, perhaps in an even more horrible state than it had been before.
"Be sharp, son," Jubal said, leading the way. "Keep an eye open." He instantly wished he hadn't said that. "Sorry."
Seth laughed. "That's okay, Papa."
Jubal was pleased by how the boy was holding up. Any other child his age would have been down with such a devastating injury. But Seth seemed to have handled it particularly well. In fact, the nine-year-old claimed that it hardly hurt him at all.
And, in some way, that worried Jubal a mite.
They reached the top of the peak and looked out across the North Carolina side of the mountain. Behind them was Tennessee and, miles below, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and even further on, Knoxville. Jubal and his family weren't ones for towns or cities, having lived in the wooded paradise of the Smokies all their lives. But that paradise was swiftly changing into a very scary and uncertain hell.
They found evidence of that a few minutes after they began to descend the eastern face of the ridge. Jubal and Seth were nearing a bend in the trail when they heard a loud buzzing from up ahead. Cautiously, they left the pathway and took to the thicket. Picking their way quietly through a stand of honeysuckle, the two watched the source of the steady droning.
It was a hive of bees. They were jet black in color and as big as chipmunks. As they swarmed around the gaping split of a hollow tree, Jubal estimated that there were probably forty or fifty of them. Five of the winged creatures had lit on the body of a jackrabbit that had been chased down and stung to death in a patch of clover. The insects seemed to be picking the animal apart, little by little, and devouring it ravenously.
Within the hollow of the tree, they could see something glistening from a massive comb within. But it was not the sweet nectar of golden honey.
Rather, the black substance the murderous bees concocted was as shiny and wet as fresh road tar and reeked like bloated roadkill on a hot, sunny day.
Slowly and silently, father and son retreated into the forest, making their way down the mountainside by that route. As they went, they were keenly aware that what lurked, unseen, in the woods might be twice as deadly as those over-sized honey bees.
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