A sudden wave of fear struck and she pulled a mask from her knapsack. If they died of Ebola, they’re contagious. Both Tara and Mary usually carried masks and surgical gloves on their excursions. Neither had survived Ebola and weren’t immune as Lee was. It was a necessity to be prepared, but since the virus had lessened, they’d all grown lax.
Tara heard Mary crashing through the underbrush, trying to reach her. Now rational thought began to seep back in and Tara glanced around, wishing she hadn’t screamed. Mary appeared through the trees, peering over the large stack of fallen logs.
It suddenly struck Tara that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to bury this body where it was least accessible, behind the natural barricade of the deadfall, and then added even more recently toppled trees to the pile. Next, she stared at the other disturbed areas around her. My God, maybe it’s a graveyard.
Tara glanced up at Mary’s frightened face and put her finger to her lips in the universal gesture of silence. The fact that she now had a face mask on must’ve thrown her friend.
“What is it?” hissed Mary.
“Just crawl over the logs and come here,” Tara said as quietly as she could.
Tara waited as Mary climbed, grunting with the effort. Once beside her, Mary stood in shocked silence. She dug in her shoulder bag, immediately grasping the danger, and put her own mask on.
“Do you suppose it’s Ebola?” Mary whispered.
“No idea. But why would they bury them if so? Burning is the only safe way.”
Tara had been quickly running all the possibilities through her head. Perhaps someone in one of the homes just beyond the path had survived the pandemic. Maybe a family, or even a husband and wife had stored enough food to hole up and wait out the first wave of dying. Maybe one of them had finally caught the virus and the surviving spouse had buried them here, far enough away to be less dangerous. Maybe they couldn’t bear to burn their loved one. Maybe the other lumps are graves too, all the same family. The only problem with this scenario was that it looked to her like this one had still been alive. Still. Tara guessed even that could happen unknowingly. Most people had little medical knowledge. There were lots of stories of this very thing taking place in Victorian days. Back then, cholera and diphtheria were the modern day Ebola, and sometimes the resulting coma’s led to premature burial.
Tara ran this past Mary as they stood there staring at the fingers poking through the dirt.
“There’s only one thing to do, Mary.”
Mary gaped at her, horrified. “You aren’t going to dig them up?”
Tara could tell by the look on her friend’s face that she already knew the answer to that. She dug in her bag for the small trowel she always carried. It was the one foraging tool she used the most to get at tubers and edible roots easily—that and a sharp knife.
Tara knelt and scraped away at the dirt around the fingers. Soon the forearm was exposed. This body was very fresh; no putrefaction had set in yet at all. As Tara gently pushed away the dirt, something odd could be seen on the inside of the forearm. “Look, Mary,” she whispered through her mask.
Strange weeping sores covered the skin of the arm, some crusted over, some still red and raw looking. Mary knelt beside her, leaning in close, the better to see. “What is that gunk?” She pointed at one of the more cavernous sores. There were tangles of tiny red and blue fibers embedded in the skin. The ends of some stuck out, while others were visible just under the surface of the pale gray flesh, twisting away into the deeper epidermis and muscle.
“What in God’s name?” It looked like some kind of space alien, science fiction stuff. Tara scraped at more of the soil to expose the body. I’ll have to decontaminate my trowel, was her next knee-jerk thought.
It was a fairly shallow grave for most of its length. Tara couldn’t bear to see the person’s face, so she moved from the arm downward. Judging about where the waist would be, she began to clear away the earth while Mary watched.
The edge of a T-shirt came into view, and Tara gingerly lifted up the filthy cloth to peer underneath. Weeping, reddened, painful-looking open sores sprouted colorful filaments from their craters. Even more thin strands poked from inflamed flesh in the healed over spots, with twisted mats of blue and red threads visible within the scabs themselves.
“My God, what is that stuff?” Mary choked.
Tara shook her head. “I have no idea. But it’s pretty gruesome.” Tara covered the abdomen back up and did her best to push the exposed hand back down into the dirt and rebury it. But now Tara felt she needed to uncover these other bumps in the ground, just to see what was going on. The look on Mary’s face told Tara she had already figured that part out as well.
Mary walked over to the next disturbed area of leaves and Tara followed, but now she glanced around through the trees, nervous about being seen.
Swallowing hard, Tara knelt beside the raised mound. This one looked older; the matted leaves covering it had not been disturbed. Tara wrinkled her nose at the slight odor of decay emanating from whatever was beneath, and began to dig carefully. Something came into view—long, hairy, and obviously not human.
“It’s a dog’s leg, Mary. Someone buried a dead dog.” Tara scraped the dirt away gently, uncovering the front leg and paw of a large breed canine with brown and white fur. Relief flooded her for a moment. She held her breath at the noxious, putrid smell wafting up now, and moved the dirt away further up, where the dog leg should connect to its body. Something not right here… Shock washed over Tara, then horror.
The upper leg of the large breed dog was shaved, and a thick line of sutures ringed the incision. At first, Tara thought a veterinarian had tried to reattach a severed limb. The grayish dog flesh ran directly into obviously infected, suppurating but decaying human-colored flesh. That’s when Tara realized the dog leg had been sewn onto a human body. And it was a child.
Jerking backwards and landing on her butt hard, Tara scrambled away from the grave, mute with shock. Surely not. No, that can’t be right.
“What is it?” Mary hissed. She had backed away from the smell, unable to see what Tara had uncovered.
Tara sat for a moment in total disbelief, her mind spinning. Then the truth of it struck her. “It’s some kind of vile experiment.” Mary’s puzzled expression brought her closer, and she squatted beside the grave. Tara watched as Mary’s face reflected curiosity, then awareness of what was in there. Mary stood up quickly, backing away. “My God.”
“No God involved in this.” Tara inched forward again, re-burying the horrific botched surgery. Steeling herself, heart breaking, she scraped away further up, where the head should be. Mary hovered over her. The composed face of a little boy, around eight years old, slowly emerged from the soil. He looked fairly peaceful, as though only sleeping, although the discoloration of his skin and the fiber-filled sores gave away his state.
“He must have died from a massive infection, from the looks of it. Dear God. Who would do such a thing?”
“Tara, let’s go, this is bad. I mean really bad. If we’re seen by whoever did this, we’re in danger.”
Tara’s mouth was watering as though she might throw up. She fought to keep from doing so. “I know. This is beyond sick psycho stuff. But I need to know what’s in the other graves.”
Mary kept watch, gazing out through the forest beyond the deadfall, looking for any signs of movement or approaching people. Tara moved to the next mound. Again she dug down, scraping away dirt, fearful now of what might be revealed. This time it was a man, fairly well preserved as the boy was. He was covered in sores and fibers, and at his thick shoulder joint, a small, eight-year-old sized arm protruded, ringed with black stitches. Tara definitely wanted to vomit now. She felt the bile rush into her throat and somehow swallowed it back down. I have to know.
She dug lower, near where the man’s legs would attach to his hips, gently scraping away the soft dirt. This man was unclothed, so it was easier to see. Tara’s mouth started watering again,
her own personal precursor to puking. It was just as she’d feared. The full grown man’s torso had the transplanted legs of an eight year old, the infected flesh at the incisions still swollen gray, and puffy. While trying to access his lower body, Tara had partially uncovered his genitals. Out of respect, she tried to look away. But now, the horror of this poor victim’s death, along with all that must have led up to it, took precedence, and a flash of insight forced her to push aside the soil still covering that area. Black sutures confirmed her worst fears.
Tara turned away and threw up her lunch on the soft ground beside the work of a madman.
Chapter 4
Tara wiped at her mouth in shocked silence as Mary helped her up from the graveside. She took one foot and carefully pushed the soil back over the body. Without a word, Mary pulled at her hard and Tara moved then, both of them jogging to the stacked logs and scrambling up and over the deadfall in record time. Whoever did this is close. This was all Tara could think. An icy fear had settled around her heart, and she found herself taking little gulps of air, as though her entire chest had turned into a block of ice.
They ran down the path through the field and out onto the country road, heading back toward the edge of town. Tara glanced around, checking to see if anyone was watching, but they were alone.
They moved in stunned silence until Mary finally spoke. “Dear God. A psychopath is on the loose, and he’s somewhere nearby.”
“My thoughts exactly. What in God’s name did we just see? I’m sick.”
“I don’t understand it, Tara. All I know is we are in danger. If anyone knew we’d seen that graveyard, our bodies would be planted there shortly afterwards.”
Tara’s head was spinning just trying to sort it all out. A nagging memory kept wiggling at the edge of her consciousness, but she couldn’t quite place it. Finally it came.
“When I was first taken into the camp, Julie told me about how things worked there. And I remember her saying there were rumors— about a barracks down at the end of the row where terrible things happened, experiments.”
Mary stared at her, horrified. “Who was doing that?”
Tara shook her head. “No idea. Julie never said. But the thing is, the Marines cleaned out Meyers’s bunch of criminals months ago! And those bodies back there look pretty fresh.” Two of the corpses were probably from Meyer’s reign, but even with winter’s cold temperatures taken into account, one looked recently deceased.
“And what in God’s name was that stuff growing on them? It was under their skin! I thought at first it was something in the dirt interacting with the decomposition, plant roots or something, but the fibers were growing beneath their epidermis, so I just don’t know.”
Tara’s stomach was still rolling. “We’ve got to pick up the wagon at Clyde’s. I don’t want to tell him about this, it’s just too much and he isn’t well.” Mary agreed and they turned down the alley to Clyde’s. He had come back outside onto the bench in his garden, the wagon full of bags and cans beside him. As they got closer, Tara saw his face was red and he was sweating.
“Clyde, you should be resting!” He seemed confused almost, and Mary shot her a look, which Tara instantly took to be a bad sign. After all, Mary was the retired nurse and had seen a lot of death and disease in her day. Mary felt his head again. “Clyde, you’re burning up. Let’s go inside.”
They took him back in, only this time they put him to bed. Mary dug in his medicine cabinet for some aspirin and gave it to him.
“We’ll be back to bring supper and check on you—and if you aren’t better soon, you’re coming to stay with me,” Tara told him.
Clyde shook his head, still alert enough to protest. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll die right in my own bed, ladies.” Tara sighed and patted his arm, knowing he meant what he said. But if it was something bad this time, she would not let him die alone. They would nurse him there.
“No one’s dying around here anytime soon,” Tara told him.
They left Clyde dozing and started home. Julie and Luke would be there with Lee and Ben. Tara barely knew where to begin, how to tell them the news. The women walked slowly down the pavement together. “When it rains, it pours,” opined Mary.
Tara’s head cleared a little after snapping back to reality dealing with Clyde, but what they’d seen was still unbelievable. How could someone do experiments like that on another human being? Had they been dead when the surgeries took place? Tara hoped so, but somehow those clawing fingers she’d first spotted told her otherwise. At least one had been buried alive.
Her heart ached for the little boy. Maybe he was dead first, before they operated on him. Dear God, I hope so. This was the work of a monster, a madman. Someone unable to function normally in society probably— a disheveled, disorganized sociopath of some sort. He would stand out like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl, easily avoided unless you were totally incapacitated or too young to know any better. Tara’s thoughts ran together in jumbled disorder in her desperation to make sense of it.
But the camp is a good place now, they’re holding classes there, teaching nursing, and, and, electronics! It simply did not make sense. Mary was as disturbed as she, and uncharacteristically quiet.
As they entered Tara’s long narrow yard, the back door swung open. Her husband Lee had been watching for her through the cracks in the boarded up windows. She glanced at the coverings on all the ground floor openings, giving them the once over. I was ready to take those off, but now I think I’ll wait. She mentioned this to Mary, who already had taken hers down.
“I’m putting mine back up.” Mary’s lips were pressed into a grim line.
Tara was glad to see Lee’s face. The shock of finding the graves had truly sapped all her confidence. Added to that, the fact that Clyde could very well be ready to die just about finished her off. Tara could feel Lee watching her—he understood her so well, he knew when something was wrong.
“What happened?” Lee leaned out the door on one crutch, but Tara barely noticed this anymore, he’d been using one so long. His eyes briefly lit up at the sight of the wagon full of food as the women unloaded it and began carrying in the items.
Mary followed her through the door, the sounds of Ben and Luke wrestling coming from the front room. Tara gave Lee a wan smile, unable to fake much more. Julie joined them in the kitchen then, still a little pale from seeing Mrs. Baines’s femur earlier, but grinning now at all the food. Tara hated to have to break the new finds to her.
“How are you doing?” Tara asked Lee, turning his question back on him.
“I’m fine, just sore. Now answer me, what happened?”
“We’re only going to tell this once, so let’s get Luke in here too. But Ben definitely can’t hear it.” At Lee’s sudden apprehensive expression, Tara just nodded in confirmation.
Julie called the pair in, asking Ben to go put away his toys before they headed back to Grandma Mary’s across the street. The boy obediently ran into the living room to get to work. Everyone turned to Tara, waiting.
“First, Clyde’s sick. He’s running a fever and seems kind of confused too.”
“Oh no,” Julie murmured.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Tara said. Hesitantly, she and Mary took turns recounting what they’d seen in the graveyard, their shock resonating in their words. The others listened in disbelief, expressing alarm then anger in turn, and finally falling into stunned silence. They all stood there quietly, with only the faint sounds of Ben rounding up his toys coming from the front room. Lee spoke first.
“My God, I can’t believe it. What sane person would do such a thing?”
Tara shook her head. “I don’t know, Lee. But I think those human beings were the playthings of a very sick mind—not sane at all.”
Mary agreed. Tara could see Luke absorbing all this, his outrage building.
“Who would do this, after all the world’s been through?”
Luke was still young and idealistic enough to be ba
ffled by the true machinations of evil. Julie just stared at Tara and her mother with a nauseous expression, searching each face for answers.
Just then Ben stormed into the kitchen. “I’m done, Mom.” Julie knelt to hug him tight, her eyes closed. “Thank you, honey,” she said, holding on to him far longer than usually required in such instances. Ben immediately noticed and began to squirm free. With a sigh, she let him go and he was off and running again, back into the front rooms of the house. Tara knew her home was so much bigger than his grandma’s and a treat to explore. Plus, Tara allowed him to play with her son’s old toys from the attic too.
“I thought we were past everything bad. I thought the world could relax now. That God was with us again,” Julie whispered, looking as though she might cry. Mary moved to her daughter’s side to comfort her.
Tara just hung her head, still ill from the images burned into her mind. “I know, Julie, I did too.”
Lee put his free arm around Tara’s shoulders as she rubbed her forehead. A headache was beginning to thump there. He finally addressed the small niggling fear building inside of Tara.
“What about the fibers? What are they?”
Everyone stared at him and Mary finally answered. “I don’t know,” she hesitated, “something to do with the surgeries maybe.”
Tara hoped they could just drop it now. She didn’t want to think about this any longer, not right this minute. She just wanted life to go back to what it was. But Lee wouldn’t stop.
“Some new kind of disease maybe?”
Tara gave him a look. Mary cleared her throat softly, answering. “Let’s hope not, because if it is, and it’s contagious, Tara and I are probably spreading it to all of you right now.”
This shut down conversation pretty quickly. They stood in a semi-circle, no one knowing quite how to react or what to do next. Tara took the lead.
“We’re jumping to conclusions. The fibers, well, they could just be some random thing in the decomposition of bodies in that particular type of soil, too alkaline maybe, or too acidic.”
Red Death (Book 2): Survivors Page 4