by Guy Haley
New Karlsville
THAT NIGHT I DREAMED about New Karlsville. I still do, from time to time. I wish I didn’t.
If there’d been a Karlsville before New Karlsville, I do not know. There might have been, and a Karlsville before the Karlsville before. Meeting Quinn made me want to learn whatever I could. I read a lot, most anything people can find me. One thing I learned is that a lot of the towns, a lot of the cities, they got names from people who lived in these lands before the Gone Before even came here. Names from the Indians that used to live all in this country, or names from countries far out on the other side of the ocean, places that give us our way of speaking, places that no one from these parts has been to for a long time.
When the anniversary of my father’s death came around every year, I got sad. Still do, as a matter of fact. My stepfather Gern had words to say about that. He used to say that people never die. Not in the meaning of the churchmen and our eternal place at the Lord’s side. He meant right here on Earth. Gern said the dead leave a part of themselves in things like names. He said that if we failed God’s second chance and that the dead were to rise up tomorrow in so great a number so as to wipe every last one of us from the Earth finally and forever, then after every last farm and town was torn down there’d be lumps and bumps in the forest to remember us by, telling the story that we were, even if there’s no one left to see it. Maybe, just maybe, God will make something new that might do better in his creation, this next thinking creature will come along and dig up what we left, and wonder at who we were. I don’t know what I believe about that, as I said, I wonder how long those traces will remain afore they’re all gone.
So I had no idea if New Karlsville was the first or the second or the fifteenth place of the name. It was the last, that’s for sure, and it was my home.
In purpose and size Karlsville wasn’t much difference from Winfort. Somewhere to live, small—three hundred souls maybe, mostly farming. We kept to ourselves. I was born there in the year of the Dominion of the Angels 1097. My father died when I was six, taken by a poison fever after he trod on a copperhead out in the fields. Mom married Gern when I was eight, and although he was always good to me, I never saw him as a father.
We had schooling, a church, smiths, store, wood ovens, mill, all the rest. Two hundred and fifty acres under the plow, a little more for pasture. The country was less wild than here, even now with the King’s Peace on the land. It was a kind, gentle place, right until the end, when it wasn’t.
I was woken at night by the alarm bell clanging. Men were rushing to the walls, bows and long pikes in their hands. We drilled for this over and over.
There was pounding on the door. “Abney, Abney Hollister!”
Mom came into the front room where I slept by the fire. She was scared looking. There was a lot of shouting outside.
“Get your clothes on, Kaley Josson is here for you.”
“Abney! Come on! You’re needed on the walls!” shouted Josson from outside.
We didn’t let the women fight in Karlsville, like most places down our way. The women were too valuable, they’re the only ones who can make new life, after all.
The front door banged open. Josson, a rangy man in his late thirties, pushed into my room. There was a gaggle of other boys with him. He was our youth marshal, leader of us boys. “Get a move on, Abney! The bell is going, the bell!”
I struggled into my pants and boots. I hadn’t time to do my laces, and was still hooking my suspenders over my shoulders when I ran out after them. Josson was riled up, scared mostly, I think. I don’t blame him. He shoved my leathers at me.
“Get these on!”
I shucked them on. They were too big for me still. Willy Keevors tied up the back for me. We stopped for a second so he could do that while I knotted my laces. That got us another holler from Josson.
The bells were all ringing, on the wall, in the church, and in the schoolhouse. Bells everywhere. Men were up on the platform round the walls. The walls were split wood planks, reinforced and cross braced, but just wood, not the stone as we have here. The first of the oil flasks went off, tossed off the wall by a hothead. A tall cloud of fire burst up, spitting down on over the outside. In the gaps between the planks I could see flickers of movement. The swaying shamble of the returned dead.
Josson shouted us up the ladders. Willy went up before me, and he stopped dead at the top.
Willy looked back down at me, his eyes wide with horror.
“There’n thousands of ’em!” he said.
“Get your ass up there, Willy Keevors!” bellowed Josson, and Willy stumbled onto the wall walk.
All us men and boys wore thick hide coveralls. The style we had down our way was like an apron with arms. You stepped into it, did it up at the back. The front had a long bib that covered the front down to your boots, but was open over the legs at the back so you could move. Thick gloves protected our hands. We boys didn’t get the masks the men wore; close-fitting leather that covered their heads, faces, and necks. First time I saw my father dressed up in his dead fighting gear, I screamed the house down.
Pity is, that’s one of the few memories I have of him.
Karlsville didn’t have no metal armor like the men here, cowhide is thick enough to stop the teeth of the dead, for a while, anyway. There was no war as deep into Virginia as we were.
Boys helped, they didn’t fight. We pushed on past the men over to our station, a platform coming off the main walk stacked high with clay pots. We were the firemen, you see. The turpentine and pitch bombs the men used to burn out the dead sometimes caught the walls. It was our job to douse the flames that got into the wood. Josson clambered up a viewing pole where he could look up and down. He had a white stick to point with. We were supposed to watch him all the time, but I was standing up on my tiptoes, trying to see out over the wall. I’d got a glimpse of the dead out there. New Karlsville was used to bands of the dead, ten, twenty strong, sometimes as many as fifty. But this time there were hundreds of them, maybe more—a great rising, all staring at the fort walls with them dead eyes of theirs. Now I couldn’t see nothing but the laced-up backs of the men in their leathers, no matter how much I bounced on my feet to see.
A couple of the men stopped in front of us—Josson’s brother, who was a lieutenant of our militia, and William Mason, who was a mason on nights other than such as that. Mason was taller than Josson. With their gear on, that and their voices was the only way of telling them apart.
“They’re all around the walls.”
“This thickly?” said Mason.
“And more to the north. Take one in three men off here, get up to Toscin’s position, and reinforce him.”
“There’s not enough here as it is!”
“Keep your voice low, Mason!” Josson glanced at we boys, shivering there next to our pots of water.
Thunder rumbled. Unusual, I remember thinking. Thunderstorms are a day thing. You rarely get them after midnight down there, and this was two, three in the morning.
Mason went off at a jog, tapping men on the shoulder and pulling them away.
The line that was left after Mason took his reinforcements looked mighty thin. The men worked in threes, an archer next to a man with a pile of rocks—good sharp ones the size of three fists. The rockman had two or three turpentine bombs. The rockman and archer were protected by a man with a long pike, but often as not the pikemen were taken away in groups. Their role in that kind of situation was to push off the dead if they began to climb atop each other, or to stab them in the head if they were pressing too hard against the wall. On the ground a good wall of pikes is fine proof against the dead, but it’s a thankless weapon. In a formation, you got to hold the damn thing over your head if you’re in the third row. On the wall, you’re hanging over the side. Fifteen feet long, that was our standard length in Karlsville, heavy with it.
Rain fizzed in the wall torches. A quick wind blew out flags of fire from each. The sky lighted up, and the pike
men looked up nervously. We had lightning poles on the wall every thirty feet, but they dipped their pike heads just the same.
Thunder boomed. The skies opened, and the rain pounded on us.
“We’re not going to have much to do,” I said to Willy.
“Yeah, yeah.” His words were shaky. That boy was flat out petrified.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!” shouted someone.
The dead moaned, loud like, like a herd of cows lowing. Their feet squelched in the mud. A scrabbling came at the wall.
“Bombs, ready!” shouted the captain. He was a farmer. The man next to him was the smith. Another guy the town weigh master. What a man was in the day did not matter. That night we were all warriors.
The rock casters lifted up their clay pots. These were fired nice and brittle. They swore something terrible as they tried to get their oil rags to light in the rain, dangling them into torches held by their comrades.
“Throw!”
All around the fort, guttering flames arced up through the air and fell down. They shattered on the ground and on the dead. A mix of turpentine and pitch burst outwards in sheets of fire. The dead moaned loudly at the pain. They hammered on the stockade. The gates creaked in their frame. The fires burned in the downpour, but they weren’t as effective as they should be with all that rain.
“Archers, loose!” cried the lieutenants. Arrows whistled out from bows. The archers held five arrows in the hands gripping the bows, flicking them into position when each shaft was shot. This way they could send down a storm of arrows. They emptied their hands quickly, pulled up more from the quivers hanging off the wall, and did it again.
“Second bombs, throw!”
Another rain of fire whooshed out, tall mushrooms painting us all in orange and red. With that moaning and that fire, it was a scene right out of hell. I have no doubt what to expect if I’m judged wanting at the gates of heaven. Whatever Satan has in store can’t be any worse than that night.
The third round of bombs went. Then the rockmen began casting out their stones. The thwack of arrow into flesh and the wet smack of rocks on bone jostled in my ears with the moans and the crack of thunder. Lightning speared down, some ways off.
“Boys!” Josson was pointing his stick some fifteen yards down the wall to the left.
“Come on, Willy,” I said. He and I hefted up two heavy pots a piece and ran from the platform. The other boys waited on eventuality.
We ducked and weaved our way through men shooting and throwing and stabbing. Where we were going was obvious; orange light burned constant there.
“Here! Here, Willy, come on!” I shouted. A pikeman leaning over the edge fell with a scream, yanked over by the dead pulling on his weapon. He was alive when he fell into them, and conscious when they ate him. I can’t shut those screams out, not ever.
There was a sheet of flame licking up the wall, a bomb had bounced into the stockade, most of the pitch had gone on the wood rather than the dead, and the lower quarter was afire. The dead scratched at the burning wall, pushing each other into the blaze, heedless of their flesh cooking as they did. There were more burning in the crowds, lighting up a sea of rain-wet heads and outstretched arms. Lightning flash picked them out in hard white. There was a big group round the gates, pushing rhythmically against them. Men leaned out over the parapet there, jabbing with pikes and tossing rock after rock into them, but it didn’t do any good. More of the unliving were heading that way. They’ve an instinct for weakness, the dead, same as wolves picking on the sick and old.
Willy froze, mouth hanging at the number of them at the gate. I poured our water down the side. But even with the rain, it weren’t enough to douse the fire.
“Willy! The fire, get the fire!” I tugged at his sleeve; he woke up enough to upend his pot down the wall. It spattered and hissed, but did a whole lot of nothing in putting it out.
“We need more water! Come on!”
We ran back to the platform, snatched up more pots. My arms were going to burn in the morning, I was thinking.
There was a deafening crack. I thought the storm was coming right overhead, but there was a splintering sound, and the moan of falling wood.
People started shouting all at once. It took me time to catch a clear indication of what was happening. “The gate! The gate’s fallen!”
The dead were pouring through the gateway into the village. The men on top were working both sides of the walkway. The town reserve formed up in the middle of the square. The ground was kept clear for twenty yards inside the walls for just this eventuality. Their formation of pikes moved down the street, trying to push the dead back out of the gate, but there were so many our men were surrounded, and the dead ran in without hindrance, coming up the stairs to the walls, heading off into town. The church rang its bells faster, the signal to retreat.
“Boys! Get off the walls now, get to the church before it’s locked up. Get to your mothers, there’s not much you can do here,” shouted Josson. He came down from his perch to join the others.
Willy and I ran. The dead were coming up onto the wallwalk the other way from us. My God, these ones were fast. They must have fed recently, and they were vicious. The men dropped their pikes and bows and drew machetes. Their hide armor gave the men some protection, but the first rows were knocked over by the ferocity of the dead’s attack, and more than a few plummeted from the walkway into the mass of the unliving surging around the pike porcupine behind the gates.
In the square there were dead everywhere. Men were screaming, screams like that pikeman pulled off the wall had made. I’d taken my part in repelling attacks before, but nothing like this. I’d never heard screams like that, the sounds men make when they are torn apart by ragged nails and blunt teeth while they’re still breathing. If it hadn’t been for Willy, I might have frozen up and gotten myself killed, but he was more frightened than me; keeping him safe kept me thinking.
Lightning flared. Men were coming in from the north wall, shouting and running, hacking into the outside of the mob swarming round the pikemen. Maybe they should have waited, formed up and attacked at once, that’s what good sense would suggest, but everyone was in a panic. The horde of the dead was still pushing through the gate, scattering into the village and putting the pressure on the pikemen badly. There were men there watching their brothers and sons pulled down and killed. There’s only so far discipline goes in a situation of that gravity.
The pikes managed to keep the dead back for a while, but one or two of the dead ducked under, then three or four, and then ten or more, until there were too many to be cut down by the machete men tasked with dealing with those that came through. The pikemen of New Karlsville must’ve sent two hundred of them zombies to their second death, five for every living man, but the dead were near limitless. Once a formation like that collapses, it goes all at once. Order broke down, and the dead fell on them.
“Come on, Willy!” I shouted, gathering my wits. Both of us had been staring at this carnage for a good few moments. “We got to get to the church!”
That was enough to get his legs moving. We ran on, dodging stragglers from the horde. There were figures up on the north wall. Lightning showed me that they weren’t no living men.
The church was ahead, a couple of oldsters and women beckoning at us. Three other kids fair flew through the door ahead of us. They were going to shut the doors.
Half a dozen dead or so came at a shambling run from behind the town smokery. They were on us. We only had ten yards to go.
The rain was merciless, soaking us all, making that leather so heavy and wet. We were slowed by it something awful. You ever have those dreams where something bad’s coming and you can’t run away, like your legs are made of gelatin? That was what it was like for real. Maybe that’s what made Willy stumble.
He fell, and they leapt on him.
The worst thing you could do in those leather aprons was roll over and show your unprotected legs, and that’s what Willy did.
They aren’t stupid, the dead, and they were on those legs so fast, teeth biting hard through Willy’s pants and Willy’s skin. He was screaming my name, holding his hand up for me, screaming “Abney! Abney!” over and over.
I wish I could say I went to help him, but I couldn’t. I looked at the doors. One more boy made it before me, then the elders on either side looked one another in the eye.
I couldn’t move. A moan made me turn. There was a dead man coming for me. My mind screamed at me to run, but my legs weren’t listening. The stench of him made my head swim. I can still see him reaching for me, them terrible teeth clacking.
Then my mom was there, burying a knife in the head of that dead man up to the hilt. She grabbed my arm, yanked me backward with uncommon strength, and I fell through the church doors.
The elders swung the doors shut.
There was pounding on the other side, then the most god-awful screaming that went on and on. Then nothing but the booming of thunder and the moans of the dead.
The church had no windows. The walls were made of dressed logs and earth. It was our fortress of the Lord. There was no way the dead were getting in there. There was me, my mom, and a hundred and twenty or so villagers. The very old, the very young, and most of the women. There was no room in that place. There were two that got bit and needed a merciful end, and the smell of their blood filled every corner of the church. It was hot, and after a few days it stank. We came mighty close to running out of water, but then the dead moved on.
We came out to find our homes destroyed and most of our men dead.
There weren’t enough of us left to make a go of New Karlsville, though some stayed to try. A couple of dozen of us headed out to other places, seeking their fortune in bigger towns or with their kin. That’s what my mom decided to do, taking us north here to Cousin Matthew.