KIRK
THOMPSON
THE GORGING
A NOVEL
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Kirk Thompson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address The Wayne Agency Literary Department at the address above.
ISBN-13: 978-0692387016
ISBN-10: 0692387013
THE MILLER FARM
The porch light gleamed behind Miller, casting his shadow out onto the grass in front of his house, making him look like a creepy vampire from some cheap horror flick. He held a double barrel shotgun in his lap with one hand on the trigger and the other on the barrel. A beer can was stuffed between his legs. He kept the shotgun ready and waiting for anyone he doesn’t have a good feeling about. He looked up at the headlights coming down the driveway that were blinding him. He leaned forward and said, “Who’s out there?” He raised the shotgun to shoulder level and peeked down the barrel.
“Hold on. Relax Miller.” Sergeant Anderson poked his head out the window of his patrol car to declare who had breached the front line. “It’s me Carl...Put down that damn shotgun before you shoot somebody.”
Miller leaned his head forward to see past the headlights and put a hand over his eyes like a makeshift visor cap. “Is that you Carl?” He lowered the shotgun. “I could have shot you dead in your tracks.”
“Damn right it’s me. Now you put down that shotgun.” Carl turned the headlights off so Miller could get a better look, hoping it would cross the old senile bastard’s mind that the state police are sitting in his driveway. Miller lowered his shotgun down to his side, keeping a finger close to the trigger. He doesn’t care much for Carl ever since Carl gave him that ticket for failure to stop. Carl opened his patrol car door and said, “Can we get out now?”
“Sure. Come on up here.” He laid the shotgun on the porch swing and grabbed his half-empty can of Kentucky Blue, the local brand, off the railing. “You boys want a beer?” He chugged the can quick and grabbed three fresh beers from the ice chest at his feet. “I got plenty of KB.”
“Oh hell, why not,” said Carl. He and Jeffrey, who is Carl’s nephew, got out of the patrol car and walked up the gravel driveway and to the porch.
“This old man is crazy, uncle.” Jeffrey kept his hand tight on the butt of his pistol. “I’ll shot ‘em if he gets crazy with us.”
“You never shoot a man that offers you beer. Even after he’s had a gun pointed at you. Now if he gives you beer, then pulls a gun, that’s when you shoot him.” Carl made himself laugh at the thought. Jeffrey wasn’t amused.
“What the hell you doing here, Carl?” Miller popped the top on his beer and took a long chug then wiped the beer dry from his mustache. “I called the Sheriff out here you know. Not much good for you state boys to be around these parts. I ain’t got no highways running through my farmland. You come to give me ticket or something?”
“Well, he’s busy and you said whoever had as much authority to come on out.” Carl leaned on the railing of the steps as Miller handed him and Jeffrey a beer. “Last time I checked I got as much authority as Billy. So what the hell you want old man?”
“Yeah. Well. I guess you’ll do then.” Miller shrugged his shoulders and rolled his old bloodshot eyes back. “Come around back. I’ll show you boys why I called. Damn shit pisses me off. A man can’t have land of his own without someone trying to destroy it. It’s a damn shame you know?”
Carl and Jeffery looked at each other, thinking either Miller is drunk at this point or they’re just too sober. “All right Miller,” said Carl. “Let’s go see what this is you called about. It better be worth my time.”
They walked around the side of the farmhouse and toward the fence that surrounded the land where Miller keeps his livestock. The moonlight shined enough to see maybe fifteen or twenty feet out into the field just past the fence.
“You see that over there?” Miller pointed out to the field. His hand waived back and forth, not giving a specific direction to where he was pointing. Carl and Jeffrey squinted their eyes and then looked at each other.
“Well, what am I supposed to be looking for?” said Jeffrey with sarcasm in his voice. “I can’t see a damn thing out there in all that dark.”
“He’s right. We can’t see anything. You got a spotlight or something?” asked Carl.
“Hold on a minute,” said Miller. “You boys ain’t got any damn night vision do ya?” He laughed as he walked back to his tractor and flipped on the lights. The field lit up like a stadium, shining light on the mystery that Miller had wanted them to see.
“What the hell?” Jeffrey’s jaw nearly dropped down to his chest. His eyes bugged out as he looked on into the vast field. He shook his head and rubbed his hands over his eyes to make sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing. Sergeant Anderson stood there, not saying a word as he looked on with the same shocked look to his face as his nephew. Mr. Miller stood back and took another chug of his beer.
“You see I told you boys some son of a bitch poisoned my cattle.” Mr. Miller walked back to the fence and leaned over, drinking his beer like he was watching some kind of a sight seeing show out in the field.
In the field there were countless cattle, lying on their side, dead as a doornail. Blood dried up around their mouths that hung open, not a single one breathing. They’re all dead. Sergeant Anderson stood with his mouth opened as well. He stood up from leaning on the fence and crossed his arms in his normal fashion, showing he was in charge at all times. He put one hand over his mouth and ran his hand down his jaw, then down his neck and back to his crossed arm position. “Well. I’ve never seen anything like this Miller.” He shook his head and looked over at Miller, who was leaning on the fencing, drinking his beer, calm as any old man. He didn’t even seem upset. He just continued to drink and stare out in the field of the recently departed cattle.
“I don’t know how they did it, but when I find the no good son of a bitch that poisoned my livestock, I’ll make sure he takes a dirt nap for sure.” Miller took another drink. It seemed kind of odd that Miller wasn’t very upset about the site of seeing nearly 300 head of cattle lying dead on his land. Thousands of dollars down the drain, and a catastrophe that would surely hurt the food market in the surrounding towns. “You boys want to see the chicken coop?”
Carl and Jeffrey slowly turned their heads to look at Miller. “You’re not gonna tell me you got dead chickens in there too are you?” said Sergeant Anderson as he tilted his head down, hoping that Miller would give him the answer he wanted to hear, which certainly isn’t yes.
Miller stood up from the fencing and leaned over toward Sergeant Anderson. His eyes and facial expression let the Sergeant know just how many beers he had drank that evening since finding out his prized possessions were not going to be steak dinners or double cheeseburgers any longer. He may have drunk six, seven, or maybe even eight of those tasty Kentucky Blue beers. He leaned over so far that Sergeant Anderson was ready to put his arms out to catch him, but it did cross his mind just to let him fall to the ground as payback for all the times he was called out on the highway to make him pull over his tractor to let people pass.
Miller spoke up and gave the answer. “Yes. I got dead chickens in there.” His eyes glistened in the bright lights as he stared at Sergeant Anderson. Jeffrey was speechless as he watched the expressionless face of Miller.
“Your chickens are dead, too?” Sergeant Anderson had doubt in Miller’s word, but at this point, after s
eeing a herd of cattle lying dead in an open field, he was apt to believe anything that came out of the old man’s drunken mouth.
“That’s right.” He put the beer can to his lips and jolted his head back to get the last drop of beer out as if it were his last. “Dog gone chickens are dead, too.” Jeffrey stood there, looking amazed. He glanced at his uncle, then Miller, and back to the cows.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Jeffrey. “You seen anybody roaming around your property lately?”
“Nope, but I think those Grant boys mighta had something to do with it.” Miller leaned against the fence and stared off in the field, knowing there was nothing he could do at this point.
“I think we ought to call it in, Sarge.” Jeffrey thought about how he overheard his uncle talking about no buzzards or mosquitos being in the air and Trooper Daniels mentioning the flocks of birds falling out of the sky recently. He looked at his uncle and said, “This don’t look good. Not one bit good at all.”
“No shit it don’t look good boy. You lost your mind or something.” Miller pulled a fresh beer from the pocket of his overalls and popped the top. Sergeant Anderson remembered that he was holding the beer Miller had given him. He hadn’t even taken a drink. Now that he knew it was in his hand, a drink was the only thing that seemed logical at this point. He put it to his lips and let the beer flow down his throat until half the can was empty.
“Let me show you the chicken coop. You might can tell me how somebody got in and killed my chickens.” Miller motioned for the two troopers to follow him toward the barn where the chicken coop was set up. They followed quickly behind after Miller cut the lights off on the tractor. The field turned to full darkness, blending the cattle in with the night. It made the troopers feel uneasy so they kept up closely behind Miller for the short walk to the coup.
Jeffrey was becoming more and more nervous with every minute that went by that he was on the Miller farm. The thought was going through his mind that something terrible must have happened here and Miller’s hiding it from Sergeant Anderson and himself. “I don’t think this is normal, uncle.” He whispered to Sergeant Anderson as they walked behind Miller. “I mean, somebody can’t just poison a whole herd of cattle and his chickens.” He kept glancing forward to make sure Miller couldn’t hear the conversation. “This shit just doesn’t make any sense, and it’s making me feel like a damn deer in hunting season being out here.”
“I don’t know what’s going on right now, but we’ll get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible. I can assure you of that.” Sergeant Anderson whispered back to his nephew. They reached the entrance to the chicken coop and Miller stopped just before opening the door.
“I went in here about an hour before I called the Sheriff. I thought maybe they ate some bad feed or something.” Miller pulled the latch from the door and opened it. “I shrugged it off and had a couple of beers, went over to the fence to lean out and watch my cattle. That’s when I saw the worst of it.” The three men walked inside the coop, stepping over the chicken shit that nearly covered the entire walkway. Jeffrey covered his mouth and nose with one hand to block the smell of dead chicken and shit from burning the hairs from his nostrils while he held onto his beer in the other hand. Miller continued: “I called the Sheriff, came back out here to check on my little fellows. That’s when the chicken flew the coop if you know what I mean.” Miller sloshed a drink of beer around in his mouth and spat on the ground.
“So you think someone poisoned the chickens, too.” Sergeant Anderson already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from the half-drunken farmer himself. Just for a little reassurance.
“How the hell else do you think it would have happened?” Miller pulled the hat from his head and scratched away at his thinning gray hair. “My damn cows are dead, my damn chickens won’t be laying no more eggs, and now my beer is getting hot. You’re damn straight somebody poisoned them.” He put the cap back on his head and proceeded to take another drink.
Jeffrey stood with his hand cupped over his mouth, trying to hold back his guts from coming up through his throat. He began to speak, muffling the words as they came out. “Who you say you think did this?” Miller and the Sergeant looked at each other and then back to Jeffrey.
“I can’t understand a damn word you’re saying boy.” Miller chuckled. “Sounds like you got a bull pecker in your mouth.”
“Take your hand off your face trooper. You’re a Kentucky State Police Officer for goodness sake.” Sergeant Anderson reached to pull his nephew’s hand down. He figured that if he had to stand there and tolerate the smell, his nephew should have to live through the agony as well. “It don’t smell that bad in here.”
“Hell, boy. You eat them chickens and they’re full of shit when we kill ‘em.” Miller started laughing. Sergeant Anderson joined in. It was all Miller could do for now given the circumstances. His cattle and chickens are dead. He never kept a big savings in the bank for the rough times, and this is surely the roughest time he would be experiencing. The beer he drank only temporarily took away the thought of how screwed he is going to be when the slaughterhouses come looking for meat to process into some fried chicken, or a hamburger, or into a bag of beef jerky.
Trooper Anderson dropped his hand to his side, jerking his head a little as the smell made its way through his nose and into his lungs that had never been polluted with anything so horrible, not even a cigarette. “I don’t think these animals were poisoned,” he said. He could nearly taste the stench.
Sergeant Anderson and Miller stopped laughing. They stood there looking at the young trooper, waiting for him to continue on explaining his theory of how Miller is now screwed out of his farm animals and not because of some horrific act of vandalism.
“If they were poisoned, and this many died, we surely wouldn’t be able to stand here and see it. There would be too much poison lingering in the air for us to be able to even breathe without respirators. You have to think about how much poison would have been needed to do a job this big.” They leaned in closer to hear the rest of the trooper’s theory. “I mean, Mr. Miller, you have been here all day, and you’re still standing, half drunk, but still standing.”
“Hey boy. I ain’t drunk.” Miller took another drink. “At least not yet anyways.”
“Go on.” Sergeant Anderson waved his hand out, motioning for his nephew to spit the rest of the words out his mouth while they were standing there, breathing in massive pockets of air filled with the reek of chicken shit.
“There’s no way possible someone could bring in enough poison to kill off this many animals at one time. I think something very strange, almost supernatural has occurred here.” The young trooper spoke like a crazy professor in a comical science fiction movie. Sergeant Anderson wanted to laugh at his nephew’s analysis of the situation. He thought to himself that Jeffrey is probably making this shit up as he goes along about some crazy force field from outer space coming down and terrorizing the livestock. Taking some innocent and unsuspecting cattle up into their space ship for probing. That would seem logical wouldn’t it? That’s right, the Sergeant wanted to laugh, and he started to, until he thought about his own comments at a crash earlier that evening. How he made the conclusion there were no buzzards or mosquitos in the air, gnawing away at the fresh meat spread across Route 31.
Jeffrey went on with his story, “What if it’s something big, something that could be spreading across to other farms? This may not be the only farm to be attacked Mr. Miller. There could be others.” Jeffrey kept talking as he looked at his uncle, then to Miller.
All three men stood there a moment, still breathing in the smell, not even caring at this point. They were in complete silence, until Miller started laughing hysterically. He laughed so hard the troopers thought his heart would explode and he’d fall dead in the piles of chicken shit on the floor. That would be a shitty way to go. He stopped laughing and said, “Let’s get the hell out of this shit, boys.” He walked past the two troopers an
d out of the chicken coop. They quickly followed behind him. Trooper Anderson closed the door, wiping his fingers on his trousers out of fear there may have been crap on the latch. Miller led them to the front porch where they all took a seat on the chairs that were lined up near the front door.
“I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it, you know Carl.” Miller leaned forward with his hands hanging limp between his knees, the right one barely hanging on to the beer he was drinking. “I don’t understand why someone would want to do this to me. I mean. My ex-wife hadn’t been heard from in years. I don’t think she’d come back now to terrorize me. Do you?” Sergeant Anderson shook his head. He couldn’t give an explanation as to why Miller’s livestock is now dead and why his chickens laid lifeless inside the coop, or why his wife would consider terrorizing him in his old age. Carl always has an answer for everything, but he has no answer tonight. All he can do is sit there and stare off into the distance, thinking about all his years with the state police. He had never seen anything as odd and eerie as what he’d just seen out in the field.
Carl started to think that maybe his nephew is on to something. Maybe those science fiction movies that he watches aren’t just for entertainment. Maybe they’re some kind of subliminal messages being laid out for only those who can decipher it like some top secret and only those who could decipher it would be the ones to survive. That’s all dumb bullshit, Sergeant Anderson thought to himself. He’s a man of the law. An experienced man with an education doesn’t let these types of thoughts overpower his mind. Maybe his hotheaded nephew can think some strange space being is coming down and killing off a few cows, but Sergeant Anderson has a job to do. “I think we need to get our thoughts together here Miller and figure out who is responsible for poisoning your livestock—”
Trooper Anderson interrupted, “If it is poison.”
Without missing a beat, Sergeant Anderson continued, giving his nephew a look, letting him know he’ll receive a reprimand back at the station for being naive on the job. “It’ll take some investigation as you know, and I’ll take care of the initial part, but you know it’s gonna be turned over to Sheriff Johnson first thing tomorrow.” He leaned forward to make eye contact with Miller, who now seemed to be in a trance, thinking about his future as a farmer. “You heard me right?”
The Gorging Page 1