AFTER

by Kelly, Ronald

  It wasn't long before they reached Amos Sterling's place. "Amos!" Jubal called out. "Amos… this here's Jubal Hayes and his boy!" He certainly didn't want to startle the old man and get shot in the process.

  There was no reply. The little mountain farmstead with its single shack, chicken coop, and graywood barn looked completely abandoned. As they reached the porch of the house, they discovered that the door had been torn plumb off its hinges.

  "Stay here, Seth," said Jubal. He checked the loads in his double-barrel shotgun and carefully mounted the porch.

  He didn't enter the house. He didn't need to. From the open doorway he could see all that he wanted to see.

  The place was in shambles. Furniture lay overturned across the boards of the floor and there were several places where holes had been torn open in the plank walls. The stench of death filled the front room and, at first, Jubal figured it to be old Amos. But it wasn't. A dark, hairy mass laid on the far side of the room near the cook stove, covered with green flies the size of field mice. It looked to be some horribly mutated boar of some kind. The critter was pert near as big as a grizzly bear and appeared to have been brought down with several blasts from a shotgun.

  The thing that disturbed Jubal the most was the amount of blood in the place. It splattered the walls and set in congealed puddles around the floor. And it was a safe bet that it hadn't all come from the invading creature that rotted on the far side of the room.

  Jubal turned and stepped off the porch. "Let's go see if we can find Amos," he told the boy.

  Seth nodded. Together they walked toward the barn.

  When they reached it, they found the big double doors cracked open slightly. "Let's be extra careful now," he told his son. Then they swung the doors wide and stepped inside.

  Jubal squinted into the darkness. "Amos?"

  In a far corner of the barn, cloaked by shadow, something moved.

  "Amos? Is that you?"

  Coarse, ragged breathing echoed from the dark form. "Stay where you are, Jubal," warned a wet, guttural voice that was familiar and yet not familiar at all.

  "What's happened, Amos?" the lanky farmer asked.

  Again that coarse breathing, low and rumbling. "A critter busted into the house a week ago. A wild boar… or it had been once. Gored me, bit me bad on the leg. Just about killed me… but I did him in before he could." Amos let out a wail of anguish. "Oh, dear Lord, I should've turned the gun on myself soon afterward!"

  "Are you okay, Amos?" Jubal wanted to know, immediately knowing he was a fool for asking.

  The old man laughed bitterly. "Hell, no, I ain't okay! That thing's bite did something to me. Something godawful."

  Jubal took another step or two forward. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he could make out a massive form crouched in the hay of an abandoned stall. It was covered with coarse brown hair and its face was malformed. Long, curved tusks protruded from the corners of its mouth.

  "Oh… Amos," Jubal whispered, his voice full of sadness and disgust.

  The thing ran a fat, pink tongue along its dark lips. "Send that boy outta here, Jubal. I'm mighty hungry… and I got me a hankering for the child."

  Jubal's hands tightened around the walnut stock of his scattergun. "Seth… go outside, will you?"

  "But, Papa…"

  "Do as I say."

  "Yes, sir." Soon the ten-year-old was out of the musky shadows and back in the sunshine again.

  "Kill me, Jubal," Amos requested of his old friend. "Kill me before I kill you and your boy."

  "But, Amos…"

  "KILL ME!!" he screamed, his voice rising into a swine-like squeal that rattled the rafters of the old barn. "Please, Jubal… I can't be like this any longer."

  Jubal Hayes had never killed a man before, not even during his stint in the Army. But then this wasn't really a man at all. Not anymore.

  Shaking, he raised his shotgun and centered the muzzles on the thing that had once been Amos Sterling. "I'm… sorry."

  "Don't be," said the thing. "It'll be a blessing. And promise me one thing, will you? Don't bury me. Burn my sorry carcass. I don't want the worms and bugs eating at me… turning into something they oughtn't to be."

  Jubal nodded. "Okay."

  Outside, Seth Hayes jumped as the thunderous boom of his father's shotgun unleashed its twin loads. When Jubal walked out, his eyes were moist and he held a five-gallon can of kerosene in his hand. "Let's torch the barn, then check the house for supplies," was all that he said.

  Jubal and Seth doused the base of the old barn with coal oil and set it ablaze. It had been a dry season and it wasn't long before the structure was completely engulfed. They watched the ravenous fury of the flames for a while and then turned to the house.

  The farmer went inside while his son waited outside on the porch. Jubal began to fill a backpack he'd brought along. He found some items that he didn't expect to find… cornmeal, sugar, flour, along with some vegetables Amos had canned from his own garden. The Mason jars of food would be the questionable items. There had been talk that the radiation had seeped into most of the metal canned food that had survived the Burn, poisoning whatever was inside. Jubal wasn't sure if the same would go for glass containers, though. He reckoned they would just have to wait and see.

  After finding all that he could find, Jubal and Seth doused the house with kerosene and set it afire. Both structures burned furiously, sending thick plumes of black smoke into the sky, as the two headed back over the ridge for home.

  "Papa?" asked Seth. "Ain't you afraid you'll start a forest fire, leaving them burning like that?"

  Jubal adjusted his backpack and got a better grip on the kerosene can, which was three-quarters full now. "Does it really matter?" he replied. He thought about all the mutated critters that roamed the dark woods of the western slope. "Maybe it's for the best."

  The following afternoon, Jubal found Lenora in her flower garden beside the cabin.

  His daughter was a peculiar one, not like other girls her age there in the mountains. She was quiet and a bit high-strung, and preferred to keep to herself. Lenora had few interests, except for reading books and tending to her flowers.

  "They're looking right pretty," he told her. He didn't deny her that simple pleasure, since, so far, the flowers seemed to be immune to the horrible changes that seemed to be infecting the other vegetation that grew rampant there on Hayes Ridge.

  Lenora looked up at him. "They're the only things that are pretty these days… in a place full of ugliness and evil."

  "It ain't just like that here on the Ridge, daughter," he told her. He hunkered down next to her, admiring the colorful marigolds, petunias, and iris in her flowerbed. "There's a stain upon the whole earth."

  Lenora kept her eyes on her toiling. "There has to be a better place than this confounded mountain."

  It disturbed Jubal to hear her dissatisfaction, but then it always had. Seth had never complained about their simple life there on the Ridge, but Lenora had always yearned for better things… things that Jubal neither desired nor could afford. Better clothes, a bigger house, the social standing that folks in the valley held so highly… they were all things that Lenora wanted for herself. He knew it had been difficult for her at school, enduring catcalls like "hillbilly gal" and such. When she was younger she had ran home in tears. Now days she simply existed in a sad, brooding state, her long black hair falling across her face like a mourner's veil.

  Jubal's purpose in talking to her had not been wholly innocent. Earlier, when working in the barn, he had looked out of the loft and noticed that she had company. Company he'd just as soon not see come around.

  "You had a visitor today," he said.

  "Is that why you stopped by, Papa?" she asked, turning angry eyes toward him. "To fuss at me about Eddie?"

  "Not fussing, girl… just concerned, that's all." But he wanted to fuss.

  Jubal wanted to rant and rave about that boy who lived down in the foothills.

  He r
eckoned Eddie Goodman was his daughter's beau, if anyone was. He seemed to be a nice enough young man, but he tended to fill Lenora's head with a lot of notions and dreams that made her downright miserable.

  Lenora worked silently for a moment longer. Then she turned and brushed her long hair out of her eyes. "Papa… I'm going down to the valley with Eddie."

  Jubal had expected as much. "Daughter, there's nothing down there for you. Not before and certainly not now."

  "You always did want to keep me clear of a normal life!" she snapped. "Away from nice things and folks who don't have to scratch and claw for a living. You're still doing it now. Keeping me up here with all this craziness."

  "You think this is crazy, wait till you get down to the towns and cities," Jubal told her flat out. "Life ain't as sweet and pretty as your flower garden, sweetheart. Folks are doing horrible things down there… raping, killing… eating their own kind, from what I hear. You'd best get those thoughts of a better life out of your head and stay up here with us."

  "But… but I love him, Papa," she said. Her eyes pleaded for understanding. "Me and Eddie, we want to get married. Find us a place that ain't crazy and raise a family."

  Jubal crouched there for a silent moment, watching his daughter work at her plants. Her long, slender fingers worked at the earth as though of their own accord. Fingers much longer than he last remembered them to be.

  "Lenora, honey, you ain't likely to find such a place in this day and time," he told her gently. "And as for raising a family, that's a dangerous notion to be having, what with all the damned radiation around. You get pregnant and no telling what's liable to crawl, slither, or claw itself out from betwixt your legs."

  "That was crude, Papa!" she said, her eyes flashing. "You had no call to say that."

  "Maybe not. But I advise you to think twice before running off and doing something stupid."

  Lenora sighed and caressed the pedals of her beloved flowers. "No need to worry yourself none, Papa. I'm not going anywhere."

  "I ain't saying all this to be mean, child," Jubal told her. He stood up and kissed her on top of the head. "I just care for you, that's all."

  Lenora simply nodded and kept digging, cultivating, kneading the earth with her pale fingers.

  Jubal headed on back to the barn. He felt no easier after their discussion at the flower bed. Rather, it disturbed him somehow… and not over the thought of her taking off with that Goodman boy.

  When he had kissed her, Jubal hadn't smelled the shampooed freshness that he was accustomed to. Instead, he detected a dank, earthy odor that he couldn't quite identify.

  "Papa?"

  Seth's voice again. Calling softly from out of the darkness.

  Jubal sighed deeply. Can't these question and answer sessions wait until morning? he wondered.

  The boy's voice came again, more urgent this time. "Papa!"

  Jubal bolted out of bed. He fumbled for the kerosene lamp on the nightstand and soon had it lit. Pale light filled the cabin, casting oversized shadows upon the inner walls. Cassie and Lenora slept soundly. They were so exhausted from their chores that he doubted the trumpets of the Second Coming could have roused them. Quietly, he took the lamp and walked across the room to Seth's bed.

  "What's wrong, son?" he asked, taking a seat on the mattress beside him.

  "It… it's my eye, Papa," he said.

  "Is it hurting you?"

  Seth seemed to consider it. "No… but it just ain't right."

  Jubal set the lamp aside and began to remove the eye patch. "Let's take a look."

  As soon as the eye patch was gone, the bloody wad of cotton gauze fell away… along with something else. It dropped upon the patchwork quilt, a shriveled sack of purple tissue with a curled, dried stem on the end. It took a moment of looking at it for Jubal to realize precisely what it was.

  It was the dead remains of Seth's left eye.

  "Damn!" exclaimed Jubal. "Seth, your eye, it's…"

  A smile crossed the ten-year-old's face. A smile full of excitement and wonder. "Papa! I can see you."

  "Now, son, that's impossible."

  "Papa… I can see a whole bunch of you!"

  The way the boy said that didn't set well with Jubal. "Let's see, son," he said, lifting the lamp closer to his son's face.

  In the dark hollow of Seth's eye socket was the bud of a new eye. Not a human eye, but something almost insectile in appearance. It was about the size of a green persimmon and covered in mirrored chambers that reflected crimson in the flickering glow of the lamplight. It twitched and revolved unnaturally, as if trying to focus on the kerosene-fed lamp and the man's face beyond.

  "It's pretty, Papa," said Seth, awestruck. "Like a kaleidoscope."

  Just looking at it scared the hell out of Jubal. "Let's cover it back up."

  "Aw, not yet…"

  "Hush now," Jubal told him quietly. "Let's not wake the others." Carefully, he placed a fresh wad of gauze over the socket, then secured it with the eye patch. "And let's not tell your ma about this just yet, okay?"

  Seth frowned. "But that'd be lying to her."

  "More like a white lie," said Jubal. "Besides, you know how worrisome she gets over you young'uns."

  "Yes, sir," said Seth.

  Jubal took time to dispose of the dead eye, then tucked his son beneath the covers. He stared down at Seth, looking a mite worried himself. "Goodnight, son," he said, before heading for his own bed.

  "Goodnight, Papa."

  After the lamp had been extinguished, Seth lay there awake for a long time.

  A white lie, his father had said.

  He had been telling his fair share of those lately. Absently, he rubbed at a sore spot on his upper right thigh. Guiltily, he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, feeling bad about failing to tell his parents about the bite he had suffered in the dead of night, several days before their visit to the cornfield.

  The following evening, they sat on the front porch and relaxed after partaking of the best meal they'd had in a long time.

  Taking from the provisions Jubal had liberated from Amos Sterling's pantry, they had eaten canned tomatoes, corn relish, lime pickles, and a pone of cornbread. They had washed it down with jelly jar glasses of sweet tea. Jubal would have preferred the beverage to be ice-cold rather than lukewarm, but he knew, in that day and time, a man had to take what he could get.

  It had been an uneventful day. As usual, they worked around the mountain farmstead, doing their best to occupy their time and their minds. Jubal had been on the roof of the cabin most of that afternoon, securing a few loose spots in the tin sheets with carpentry nails. Midway through his laboring, he had heard a commotion in the blackberry patch out near the smokehouse. Jubal had glanced up to see that a woodchuck had strayed too close to the thicket. The critter had taken a nibble on one of the succulent berries and been torn asunder savagely by the thorny bramble. Jubal had watched in disgust as the vegetation had ripped the woodchuck into quarters and devoured it at leisure.

  Now as the sunset blazed, fading toward twilight, the farmer sat on the porch with his family. A full belly had put Jubal in a light-hearted mood and he'd brought out his banjo. He picked some of the old standards – "Cripple Creek", "Cumberland Gap", and "Cotton-Eyed Joe." Although Cassie despised the instrument, she seemed to enjoy it when he launched into "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms."

  Still, despite the music, Jubal couldn't help but feel worried. He gave his fingers a rest and regarded his children on the porch swing. Lenora sat on one end, while Seth occupied the other. Both had been quiet and to themselves that evening.

  His daughter was reading a book; an old dog-eared paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird that they kept on a bookshelf near the dinner table. Jubal watched her pale fingers grip the covers of the book. Either she was getting skinnier from lack of food… or her fingers were getting longer. He wanted to dismiss the latter as foolishness on his part, but found it difficult to abandon the thought.

  Seth c
oncerned him even more. His son had complained of a splitting headache all that day, as well as stiff and aching joints. He huddled at one end of the swing, covered in a wool blanket, despite it being mid-August. Cassie was afraid that it might be a touch of the flu. She'd worried herself sick over the possibility. If the radiation had transformed the animal and plant life into such monstrosities, wouldn't it be possible for germs and viruses to be affected as well?

  Jubal had a notion that something else was going on with his son. He'd noticed that the flat of the eye patch was bulging a bit, as though Seth's new eye was getting larger underneath. So far, Cassie hadn't seemed to detect anything out of the ordinary. He reckoned she was preoccupied with her praying and Bible reading lately. It seemed like his wife had become obsessed with the book, as though she were searching for some answer as to why things had turned out the way they had.

  At that moment, she was working on her needlepoint. He glanced over at the sampler she had been fiddling with all that evening. She worked with needle and thread on the final letter of the phrase. VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD it read. Sometimes Jubal was afraid that Cassie's sanity was slipping due to the adversity they had to face from day to day.

  He played a couple more tunes on his banjo, then stopped as Cassie leaned forward in her rocker and lifted her hand. "Hush for a minute," she told him.

  Jubal did as she asked. He listened himself and heard something that sounded like wind rustling through the leaves of the trees. But he knew that wasn't what Cassie had heard. No, it sounded more like a rattling noise… en masse. Setting the banjo aside, he stood up and looked off toward the sunset. He watched as a flock of dark forms winged their way toward them. At first they might have been mistaken for bats. But as Jubal walked to the edge of the porch, he could seem them more clearly. Their wings flapped as their elongated bodies hung coiled underneath them and, at the end of their tails, brittle buttons rattled incessantly. From the thickness of them, the farmer figured there were three or four dozen of the winged creatures.