by N. W. Harris
His eyes fixed on Mrs. Morris’ disfigured and lifeless body in the Honda. She was one of the sweetest people Shane had ever know, always smiling and trying to feed him when he went to Aaron’s house. Everyone on the football team thought of her as a second mom, and Coach even let her be on the sidelines during games.
One massive sob rose up from his feet until it encompassed his entire body. A pitiful, jerky sort of yelp came from between his quivering lips, and then he fell silent and motionless, his shoulders drooping and his chin on his chest. A tear burned on his eyelid. The crippling numbness he’d experienced after his aunt died returned, a heavy cloud of gloom smothering his senses and emotions.
“Shane?” Kelly’s concerned voice cut through his morbid stupor once again, muffled by the truck’s cab. “You alright?”
He tore his eyes away from the corpse and looked down through the windshield. Kelly held Nat’s head in her lap, her shirt pulled over the little girl’s face so she couldn’t see. Kelly’s eyes were wide and her skin blanched white. Considering what she’d just seen, her level of composure was a testament to her fierce determination to protect her sister.
Shane glanced back at Ms. Morris and climbed off the hood. How would he tell Aaron? Was he even alive? Getting into the cab, he put the truck in reverse. The Ford rocked left and right. There was a sickening, wet, crunching sound as it rolled back over the dogs he hit on his way in.
Shifting to drive, he steered toward town. Nat whimpered, still lying on Kelly’s lap. Shane stared blankly out the windshield, and the violent deaths played over and over in his head as he drove. Each recollection seemed to strip away a chunk of his soul, drawing life out of him.
When he gazed in the rearview mirror, he saw the blue tarp flapping in the truck’s bed behind him, his aunt’s foot exposed. He slowed down to keep her covered, and to prevent running into any other wrecked cars, which they encountered more frequently as they approached town. The green clouds overhead thickened and blocked the moon. Lightning danced across the sky every few minutes, illuminating the dark and hilly countryside in nightmarish snapshots, and leaving spots swimming in Shane’s vision. When he blinked at the glare, the mutilated dead were there—the truck driver with no eyes, his aunt swollen to the point of bursting, and Mrs. Morris bloody and chewed to shreds by the dogs.
“Can we go home now?” Nat pleaded, startling Shane out of his melancholic reverie.
Kelly glanced at Shane, her brow squeezed with sadness. Her blue eyes were wide with concern and her skin was pale with shock.
“No, sweetie. We have to go into town,” she said, a tremble in her voice. She used a finger to push the hair out of Nat’s face, and Shane remembered doing the same for his aunt less than an hour ago.
“But won’t Mommy and Daddy be mad if we come home late?” Nat sounded oblivious to the fact that her parents were gone, though she’d watched them die. Perhaps her brain forced her to forget as some sort of defense mechanism. Shane was heartbroken for the girl but also jealous of her amnesia. “They yelled at you when you came home late last time.”
“It’s okay this time, Nat,” Kelly said. She sniffled and cleared her throat, quashing some of her emotion and maintaining her role as big sister. “Mommy and Daddy want us to take a field trip with Shane.”
“A field trip.” Nat brightened a little. “Are we going to the zoo?”
“Maybe. But for now, I want you to lie down and rest.” Kelly patted her thigh. “You can’t have much fun if you’re a sleepy, grumpy bug.”
Nat stretched out on the seat and put her head on Kelly’s lap. “I hope Mommy and Daddy don’t miss us too much while we’re gone. Maybe we should call them later.”
“That sounds like a good idea, Nat.” Kelly’s voice was weak and shaky like she might burst into sobs, but she kept it together.
The exchange filled Shane with pity, and he gained even more respect for Kelly. Because of short chats he’d had with her at church and school, which usually left him feeling like a peasant talking to a princess, he knew there was more to Kelly than her looks. But the attractive blonde cheerleader was stronger than he’d ever imagined. Shane pulled his shoulders back, shrugging off some of the despair. Her sense of duty caused him to cling to his purpose—keeping Kelly and her sister safe. It was the only thing that could save him. The blessed distraction seemed to help blood flow in his veins again and made it easier to breathe.
Petting Nat’s head, Kelly hummed a lullaby. She sniffled again, and Shane leaned over and opened the glove compartment, pulling out a small box of tissues. Giving him a grateful look, Kelly took one and wiped her eyes, and then continued to hum to her little sister. A mournful undertone in her sweet hymn tore at his chest. It reminded him of when he had fallen asleep on his aunt’s lap at the hospital, that night when his mom passed. She had petted his hair and hummed to him much like Kelly was to her sister. He was thirteen then, and was certain his mother wouldn’t die. Shane had prayed so much that he just knew there was no way God would take her. But he did. And now all this.
“What happened back there?” Kelly asked in a hushed voice after Nat fell asleep.
“The dogs… they did what the cows did,” Shane replied, not having the stomach to get too descriptive. “The odd thing is that they didn’t attack me, even when I kicked them away. The same thing happened with the bees and my aunt. I was with her the entire time, but I didn’t get stung once.”
“Bees?” Kelly asked nervously.
“Yeah,” he replied with a faltering voice, surprised he could even talk about it. “And hornets, wasps, yellow jackets, and everything else with wings and a stinger. There must’ve been millions of them.”
“I’m sorry, Shane,” Kelly whispered.
“Me too.” He glanced at her. “I mean, about your folks.”
They rode in stunned silence. Shane navigated the Ranger around cars entangled with farm animals and with other cars, the drivers all massacred in their seats or trampled on the asphalt just outside their vehicles. Kelly attempted to find answers to what was happening by searching the internet with her smart phone. She couldn’t keep a signal long enough to complete a web search, but didn’t stop trying after most people would’ve given up. Shane sensed she was using it as an excuse not to look out the windshield at the carnage they encountered every few minutes. She finally gave up and tried to call her friends, her eyes focused on Nat in her lap. Her phone continuously rang or she’d get a busy signal. As with Shane’s earlier efforts, no one answered.
“This thing is useless,” Kelly said after a half hour, shoving it into her pocket.
“Maybe all this weird weather is messing with the reception.” Shane squinted at another bright flash of lightning. It fractured the darkness with its blinding jaggedness, illuminating a tractor in the middle of a field to his left. In the split second the world was lit up, he saw a man slumped in the seat. Shane’s stomach twisted. The farmer was dead. He’d seen lots of death, but somehow the tractor alone in the field with the man dangling over the steering wheel seemed to hit harder than the last few he’d encountered on the road.
“The cows didn’t go after Nat and me either,” Kelly mused. “It’s like the animals only want to kill the adults.”
“Somebody out there has to know what’s going on,” he whispered, reaching down and clicking on the old radio.
The Christian station Granny usually listened to came on, a prerecorded program about a drug addict who was born again playing. The numbness caused by all the death Shane had seen retreated at the sound of another person’s voice. His heart raced and perspiration beaded on his face. He needed to know what was happening, what made the animals and insects go mad, but he also feared the answer. The little boy in him wanted to go home and crawl into bed, where he would pull the sheets over his head and wait until all this passed. The young man in Shane knew hiding wouldn’t resolve anything. He had to face whatever evil was out there, causing the creatures to kill. Searching for news, he turned
the dial up through the stations.
He stopped at his favorite alternative radio station. The static faded, so he knew the dial was in the right place, but only eerie silence came from the old radio’s speakers. Turning the dial higher, he passed the country channel his dad liked—still nothing. No one seemed to be manning the stations. After going to the top of the dial, he clicked over to AM and began rolling back down.
“It’s like everyone in the world is gone,” Kelly whispered.
“Well, we’re not,” Shane corrected, a firmness in his voice he didn’t expect. “And that means it’s likely more people are still alive.” He was trying to convince himself as much as her.
What if they were the last people alive on the planet?
“I hope you’re right.” Kelly’s voice faltered, like she might start crying again.
“I know I am.” Shane reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. When we get to town, we’ll find lots of other people. Just you wait and see.”
His words made him ill. They sounded too much like the promises he’d made to his aunt when he tried to get her to the hospital, right before she died. Truth be told, Shane didn’t know if anyone else had survived. And he feared it might just be a matter of time before the animals and insects turned on him, Kelly, and Nat. He never felt so lost and out of control.
Wanting to subdue the sense of helplessness, he made a plan to go to the hardware store and get some guns. He’d stock up on bug spray as well so they’d have a chance if the hornets attacked again. One thing was for certain, he was done with seeing people get killed. He’d die before he let any harm come to Kelly and Nat.
A pileup of cars and an overturned cement truck, its lumpy cargo hardening across the road, blocked the west end of Main Street. Shane took the pickup around the lower side of town. The sun had been down for about twenty minutes, and the yellow streetlamps came on, but dreary darkness shrouded all the stores, no one around to turn on their lights. At this time on most summer nights, the restaurants and shops of the hilltop town of Leeville were busy, catering to a handful of locals and hundreds of tourists up from Atlanta to find reprieve from the smoggy heat in the cooler, clean mountain air. But now it looked vacant, so desolate and quiet it creeped Shane out.
It would be bad enough to think the inhabitants of the quaint mountaintop community had vacated due to some unknown event, rendering it a ghost town. Trapped in this nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, Shane couldn’t help concluding the silence was most likely because everyone was dead, all executed in the worst ways imaginable—their throats ripped out or their skulls caved in by beloved pets and livestock, or perhaps worse, killed by the venom of snakes and murderous insects.
Turning off the steep alley leading down to the road behind town, he drove past the body of an old man with a deer’s antler protruding from his chest and glanced over at Nat. Thank goodness she was still asleep. He expected the town might be filled with dead and couldn’t bear the idea of the little girl seeing it or of trying to explain to her what happened.
“So wrong,” Kelly remarked, tilting her head down and shielding her eyes.
The headlights of the truck illuminated another victim lying in a glistening pool of blood up ahead. Three raccoons leapt off the corpse and waddled into the bushes in front of a bank on the left side of the road. The person’s face and arms were ripped up, with clothing so bloody and tattered that Shane couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man. Looking at the mutilated body made him worry his dad might not be alive. Guilt surged in him when he realized he hadn’t worried about him sooner. Had they grown so far apart that he didn’t even care if his father had been killed? A bolt of pain shot through Shane’s heart, and he knew the answer was no. He loved his dad, at least when he was sober.
“They’re all grown-ups,” Kelly whispered.
“Maybe the animals are only going after them,” Shane replied. He made a conscious effort not to focus on any more of the carcasses.
“Look,” Kelly exclaimed, pointing out of her window at four kids huddled on the loading dock behind the Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
With all the dead around, seeing the kids alive was akin to finding water in a desert. He steered the truck off the street and into the parking lot. Before his mom died and his dad started drinking heavily, he used to bring his radio-controlled cars here in evenings with his dad and play until well after the streetlamps went on. His dad would tirelessly help him tweak the cars’ little, gas-powered motors to get the most out of them.
The headlamps of the truck illuminated three boys and a girl. They backed into the shadow between the dumpster and the building. The relief of seeing someone else alive distracted him from the bittersweet memory of the time he’d spent in this parking lot with his dad. Shane leapt out and raised his hands.
“Hey, guys. Y’all okay?”
They didn’t answer and huddled deeper into the shadows, seeming worried Shane had hostile intentions. He guessed their ages to be between seven and ten, probably all elementary or middle school kids. Their wide eyes and pale skin spoke to all the death they’d seen. Maybe they’d even watched their parents get killed.
“We ain’t going to hurt you,” he said gently, stepping closer to the concrete loading dock. “We’re just wondering what happened here?”
“It was them bears,” the shortest said, stepping forward. The streetlamp revealed a boy with disheveled blond hair wearing pajamas with bulldozers on them. “They came in the store and killed my mom and dad.” He looked down at Shane hopefully, as if expecting he might be able to fix everything.
“Mine too,” the girl with brown pigtails and wet, green eyes said, and then glanced behind her at the back of the grocery store. The other two boys nodded as if to say the same happened to them.
Wishing he had some comforting words, Shane stared up at the kids. What could be done? They couldn’t be left here to fend for themselves, though he wasn’t sure they’d be much better off if they came with him.
“No sense in you guys hanging out here.” He put on his best adult voice, expecting it might calm them. “Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll try to sort this all out?”
They eyed him for a moment, and then looked at each other. The smallest pajama-clad boy who had spoken first gave a defeated shrug and climbed down off the loading dock with the others following one by one.
“What are your names?” Shane asked, hoping to ease some of their sorrow as he led them to the truck.
“I’m James,” the smallest boy replied.
“My name is Sara,” the girl said, a confidence uncommon for children her age apparent in her tone.
The other two boys didn’t answer, glancing down at their feet solemnly. One pushed his hands into his pockets, and the other crossed his arms tightly over his chest as if to hug himself.
“They ain’t said a word since we found them,” James explained after a moment of quiet.
Shane looked at the two boys and smiled with all the kindness he could. “That’s alright. I’m Shane, and that’s Kelly in the cab.”
At the back of the truck, Shane lowered the tailgate. With all the other unnerving crap he’d seen, he’d forgotten about his aunt. Her pale gray, swollen foot stuck out from under the blue tarp. Slamming the tailgate and spinning around, he blocked the kids’ view.
“Why don’t y’all go up and introduce yourselves to Kelly?”
James nodded and obeyed, the others following him around to the passenger side window. Kelly must’ve guessed Shane needed her to distract the kids. With that same warm, big sister attention she’d shown Nat earlier, she kept their attention by asking questions—how old they were, what grades they were in, and so on. Outgoing little James replied he was eight. Sara said she was seven. Shane felt the sudden weight of his and Kelly’s new responsibility. Including Nat, they had five young kids to look after now, and he expected the number might continue to grow. But what could they do? Someone had to help these children. The
y wouldn’t survive very long running around out here by themselves. He could only hope they’d find some adults soon, someone with some answers. But he was becoming more pessimistic with each dead body they encountered.
Satisfied Kelly had their focus, Shane reached into the bed of the truck and grabbed his aunt’s ankles. Her flesh was cold and spongy in his hands, like it might slip off the bone. He swallowed hard and tugged her onto the tailgate. Wrapping the tarp tighter around her, he gritted his teeth to suppress a gag and then felt terribly disrespectful for it. Lifting her stiff body, he carried her over to the loading dock and laid her in the shadows. Succumbed by a wave of shame from his desire to get her corpse out of his arms as quick as possible, he kneeled and whispered a prayer.
The mournful words the energetic young pastor of their church spoke at his mom’s and his grandmother’s funerals were agonizingly vivid in his thoughts. Tears brimmed in his eyes and flowed down his checks. His simple prayer that his aunt made it safely to heaven, where she’d never suffer again and could rejoin her father, mother, and sister seemed insufficient. When he could think of nothing more to say, he stood and wiped his face with his sleeve. He told himself he didn’t want to leave his aunt there in the open, but it seemed more important to worry about the living, and he didn’t know what else to do with her. In his heart, he knew he just wanted to get as far away from her as he could. Her swollen body represented everything that was wrong, keeping death at the forefront of his thoughts and making him worry about his dad.
“I’m sorry to leave you here, Aunt Lillian,” he whispered, looking skyward, “but you’re in a better place now anyway, and you don’t need this body anymore. Please forgive me.”
A low, moaning growl carried though the backdoors of the Piggly Wiggly. It had to be the bears the kids mentioned. Having no interest in coming face-to-face with one of the vicious creatures, he spun away and jogged to the truck.
Kelly had kept the new kids distracted, and they didn’t seem to notice him moving his aunt’s body. Shane helped them climb in the bed, urged them to hang on, and then closed the tailgate. Getting behind the wheel, he let out a long, trembling sigh. He felt like he should be punished, like he’d committed a heinous crime against someone who’d always shown him nothing but sincere kindness and love.