by Tim Curran
Carl blew one of them away with the Mossberg, scattering his guts for twenty feet and, dropping and turning, wasted another. Then three of them knocked him down and it was all over as they raised their hatchets.
But Janie grabbed an axe from one of the dying ones and buried it in the back of a Clansman. He spun around, axe sunk in his back and smashed her with his fist. She went down and he leaped on top of her, tearing away her shirt, her white breasts exposed. He grabbed them with his filthy, pocked hands.
“JANIE!” I cried out.
And then I was in the mix. I ran and punted the Clansman in the head like I was kicking the winning field goal and the Clansman rolled away, limp as a rag. Then I leaped, diving, and took out two more like bowling pins, jumping to my feet and kicking one of them until they were no longer moving. Then I took up Carl’s dropped Mossberg and cracked another in the face hard enough to rip the gasmask right off him. He stood there, his face like a fleshy, grinning skull covered in clots of oozing white jelly. Mickey hit him from behind with a club and his skull cracked with an audible snapping. I gave him the butt of the Mossberg full in the face and down he went. Four Clansman were left and they came on screaming and swinging chains and throwing hatchets.
And that’s when the birds came.
18
There was a sudden wild squawking and chirping and trilling and we all looked skyward. Even the Clansmen. Except there was no sky. Above the surrounding buildings it was black and the air was thrumming with the flapping of hundreds of thundering wings. Janie was on her feet, zipping her coat shut and covering herself when they came. I threw myself at her, knocking her down as two- or three-hundred birds came swooping down in a single shrilling mass. There was nothing to do but cover my face and roll into a ball, covering Janie’s body with my own.
The birds came down.
The world was a cacophonous storm of cawing and pounding wings. I felt them beating around me, feathers filling the air. Beaks pecked me, clawed feet tore my skin. There were so many I could not breathe. I was going to suffocate in feathers and bird shit. As I lay there with Janie, I thought I heard her scream and I was certain I did. I was gasping for breath. Crying out as beaks drilled into me again and again. With one hand I swatted at them and they pecked away at my palm, my fingers until they stung and bled. The air was thick with them, with that awful humming and fluttering and squawking.
And about the time my mind began to unreel from the crowding of birds, the feel of oily feathers and nipping beaks and the gagging stench of dander and rot…they lifted. They pulled away and were gone.
Then I looked finally. They weren’t gone at all.
They were attacking the Clansmen.
It was incredible but it was happening. Something about them had drawn the birds. I saw ravens and crows, buzzards and even a few huge vultures, as well as mutated forms with greasy green wings and scaly, knobbed heads, leering red eyes and hooked beaks that almost looked like sickles. They went right after the Clansmen and clawed them with their feet and pecked away at their gas masks, their mottled heads and yellowed hands. They hit them from every direction.
One of them tried to run with twenty or thirty birds on him, some circling and dipping in for attack, but most clinging tight and pecking away mercilessly. He looked like some kind of contorted, grotesque scarecrow that was finally getting his due from the birds he had frightened away for so long. He finally went down and the birds settled over him, pecking him until he was writhing red meat. I was astounded and I was pretty sure the others were, too.
Another Clansman who’d been making a pretty good show of himself by batting away birds with a swinging chain, their broken bodies littered at his feet, suddenly let out a piercing, guttural cry and…disappeared. He vanished as a flock of birds simply enveloped him. The crows and buzzards and the rest just kept cawing and squawking as their beaks rose and fell, coming away stained red, yanking out strings of tissue. It was an appalling sight. When he was down, crushing a few of his attackers beneath him, the birds kept at it, crowding in, fighting for space like piglets at their mother’s teats. The sound of the Clansman being stripped was simply awful…moist tearing sounds and crunching noises and pulpy hammering as beaks dug deeper for hot goodies.
It went on for about twenty minutes. We did not move. We didn’t dare.
After a time, many of the birds flew off, but most stayed and discovered the corpses and remains of Fisher’s people and began to feast. And that’s when I figured it out. Of course. What did vultures and buzzards, crows and ravens have in common? They were carrion-eaters. That’s probably why they had come in such numbers in the first place…to feed on all the corpses in the streets. But when they came-separate species flocking together for reasons I could not hope to guess at-they discovered the Hatchet Clans. They decided they looked tasty.
But why was that?
The Clansmen were hideously infected and disfigured by some creeping fungus, but they were certainly not dead, not soft and greening. But there was something that attracted the flock.
Something.
The birds were still everywhere, happily feeding, fighting amongst themselves for the tastiest bits, but they were paying no attention to my posse.
“All right,” I called out in a calm, cool, non-threatening tone of voice. “We’re going to leave now. Just everyone stand up and follow me out of here. I’ll get up first.”
Tensing, I slowly got to my feet, breathing nice and slow, trying not to gag on the stink of the carrion birds or what they were eating. A raven flew over my head, unconcerned. A huge buzzard pulled a stringy red flap of meat from a corpse’s neck, chewed it down, and made a sharp hissing sound at me. Its jaws yawned wide and it hissed again, then it got back down to its meal. I started breathing again.
The Clansman were nearly reduced to skeletons by this point. The one that had tried to run wasn’t much more than that. A raven was pecking through a gash in the gas mask, tearing out pink scraps while a pair of crows sat atop the bloody exposed ribcage, spreading their wings now and then, cawing, and digging out some juicy morsel overlooked.
Around me, the others began to get up. Very, very slowly. They were seeing that they were dead center of the feeding grounds now. The birds were everywhere. Lined up atop wrecked cars and trucks like soldiers in ranks. Flying though the air, circling high above and not very high above at all. Buzzards walked around with chunks of red, ragged meat hanging in their jaws. Vultures were pecking their entire heads into the body cavities of sprawled corpses, shaking their entire bodies as they ripped at something within. When they pulled their heads free, savagely gulping down morsels, they were red and dripping.
I led my people forward, thinking the whole time, this is either gonna work or we’re all about to die in the worst way imaginable. But I did not hesitate. Years back, in Youngstown, I’d known a guy named Roger Sweed who worked at the zoo with the big cats. He claimed that when you had to deal with them you never showed fear. When you were in their areas you had to act like you belonged there. So that’s what I was doing now: just threading my way amongst the corpses and birds, being perfectly casual and disinterested in what they were doing. Which was not real easy when a raven plucked an eye out and stood there watching me, the eyeball dangling from its beak by the optic nerve.
I walked on, my empty Savage in one hand and Janie’s hand in the other.
There was bird shit and feathers everywhere, scattered bits of human, dead birds lying in tangled heaps and others dragging injured wings that scampered away as I approached.
Birds squawked at me, but I ignored them. I moved through breaks in their ranks, paying no attention to the ones that flew just over my head. Flies lit off corpses and scattered limbs and viscera, huge buzzing clouds of them. They droned at my ears and crawled over my neck but I did not swat at them. The entire time I thought the birds would attack at any moment.
But they never did.
19
“It’ll be dark in an hou
r,” I said, as we paused to reload our weapons, hiding out in a trashed pharmacy.
Carl looked around the devastated city. “So we better find somewhere to lay low for the night.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Gremlin said. “I thought we were going to be out of here. Somewhere else. Fuck.”
Using the U.S. Army medical pack I’d gotten from Sean, I attended to Texas Slim’s spear wound. It was a nasty looking gash across his ribs, but hardly fatal. I disinfected it, closed it with a couple butterfly bandages, taped a sterile battlefield dressing over it, and gave him a shot of antibiotics just to be safe. He’d be sore for a few days but nothing more.
Janie was off looting through the store. She was gone quite awhile. When she got back there was a funny look in her eyes.
“Where you been?” I said.
“Just looking around,” she told me. She was lying and I knew it. But I wouldn’t realize how big of a lie it was until much, much later.
“Why don’t we keep going…we have guns,” Mickey said. “Within an hour, I think, we can be at the garage with the Jeep. Why wait until tomorrow?”
Texas Slim grinned. “Because when it gets dark, child, out come the oogies and the boogies and the things that go bump in the night.”
“Let’s risk it,” she said. “We get that Jeep we can be out of Gary in twenty minutes.”
“Why don’t you just do us all a favor and shut up?” Janie said.
“Take it easy, Janie,” I told her.
Her eyes were not just blue at that moment but glacial. “Jesus Christ, Nash. She’s been with us a few hours and she’s calling the shots? Who the hell asked for her advice anyway?”
Mickey shrugged. “I was just saying.”
“Oh, shut up.”
They stood there, staring at each other while I was getting annoyed and Texas Slim and Carl were silently amused and Gremlin was practically in heat. “Hey,” he said. “Just like Roller Derby. We’re gonna have us a cat fight. Out come the claws! Fur is gonna fly!”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” Mickey told him.
“No, I wasn’t thinking about fucking myself. I was thinking about fucking somebody else.”
I got in there then. God knows I’d had enough of that fucking idiot by then. I shoved Gremlin and put him on his ass. “Knock it the hell off. What did I tell you about that shit?” I had a sudden desire to throw him another beating. The only time that asshole took a break from whining and complaining was to start panting over one of the girls. “Keep it in your fucking pants. Christ.”
I turned and saw that Mickey was smiling at me like I’d come to her rescue and I also saw that Janie was steaming. The green-eyed monster was out of its cage.
“Let’s all just settle down here, okay?” I said to them. “We’re not going to accomplish anything like this.”
Gremlin got up, brushing dust off himself. His face was still bruised from the last time we’d tangled. He touched his fingertips to a purple welt under his eye that was slowly fading. “Sure, Nash. I got ya. We got to keep our new girl nice and fresh, eh?” He winked. “Our friend don’t want damaged goods, do he?”
“Here we go again,” Carl said.
“What the hell is he talking about?” Mickey wanted to know.
Texas Slim hooked her by the arm and led her away. “Nothing to worry about, my dear. You see, many years ago, Gremlin’s mother took a large healthy shit and fell quite in love with one of the turds she saw in the bowl. So she nursed it and fed it and brought it up and the result of that you see standing over there.”
Carl burst out laughing.
We all did…except for Janie and Gremlin himself.
Sighing, I led them outside.
It was about that time that I noticed we had an audience. At first, I went for my gun…but then lowered it. There was a man standing not fifteen feet away on the sidewalk. He was naked except for an outrageous cranberry bathrobe that was hanging open, his business on full display. His fingernails and toenails were both painted purple.
“Boy howdy,” Texas said to him. “Join the party?”
The guy just stared at us. He had a brilliant, fluffy head of trailing blonde locks. He also had a beard that was more white than gray.
Texas Slim had no fear of crazy people. He went over to the guy and tied his bathrobe shut for him. “The ladies, you understand,” he said, pressing a hand to his wound.
The guy had a phonebook under his arm. He pointed down the street and said, “They came in silver buses. I saw ‘em. They had orange suits on. They took Reverend Bob and threw him in the bus. I saw it happen. I saw lots of things happen. I wrote all down in my book here.” He showed us the phonebook, shrugged. “I ate my dog because I was hungry.”
Carl laughed in his throat and turned away. “Who’s the fucking Gomer?”
“Pay no attention to Carl,” Texas Slim said. “He hasn’t had a serious romantic encounter since his dear mother passed.”
“Kiss my ass,” Carl said.
Bathrobe wandered away down the street. Texas called to him, but he kept going.
“Want me to grab him?” Carl whispered.
“Why?”
“You know why. It’s almost time.”
“Let him go. I’m tired of this shit.”
I started walking again, Mickey at my side.
“Where are we going?” Janie said.
“To find that Jeep.”
“Tonight?”
“Why not?”
She just shook her head and Mickey grinned. We walked in silence, Texas Slim and Carl out front with their guns keeping an eye on things. I was thinking about everything and trying hard not to. We trudged on, getting closer to the river. In the distance I could see the mills and refineries Gary was famous for. A few birds circled in the sky and sand blew over the roads in a fine spray. We went over a grassy hill, crossed railroad tracks, cut through some wilted thickets and then before us, stretching in all directions, a great blackened pit.
It was full of bodies.
20
Well, bodies was not exactly accurate, for the pit was actually filled with skeletons that had once been bodies. There was nothing fresh down there. Just what looked like thousands of skeletons heaped and broken, disjointed and blackened. There was ash everywhere. The pit stretched easily for three city blocks in either direction, as far as I could tell.
“Must’ve burned ‘em here,” Mickey said. “I saw a pit like this outside Allentown.”
Texas Slim nodded. “The germs and fallout must have been very bad here. Too close to Chicago. They must have dumped them here and torched them. Judging by the ashes everywhere, I’d say it went on for some time.”
I saw that it wasn’t just bones down there, but the wrecked hulks of cars and trucks. Lots of things had been dumped down there. It was a junkyard.
“You didn’t know this was here?” Janie asked Mickey.
“No…how would I?”
“Well, you led us right to it.”
“So what?”
“So, you’re leading us to that Jeep. You know where it is. You didn’t know this was here?”
“No, I didn’t. I came out here once. But not on foot. We were on the road north of here, on the other side of the river. I-ninety.”
Janie did not look satisfied and I knew I had to get the show rolling again here or another fight would break out. My little group was getting frustrated, tired. They needed something to set their sights on. That’s why I was going after the Jeep now rather than wait until tomorrow. At least, that was one of the reasons. The need to keep moving west was getting very strong, you see.
The sun was hovering just over the horizon now. I saw that there was a trail cut through the pit and up the other side. If we tried to go around, it would probably be dark by the time we hit the river.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Down there?” Gremlin said. “I’m not going down into that cemetery.”
“Then you can stay behind.
”
I started down, moving easy so I didn’t go sliding on the sand. Pebbles and loose rocks went rolling into the bone pit. The others fell in behind me without a word. Gremlin, too. It must have been a quarry or sandpit at one time that had been abandoned and then opened back up, enlarged, when thousands were dying by the day and infectious disease was burning hot through the city.
The hillsides were littered with stray skeletons wrapped in threadbare rags. They were rising from the sand, their bones so white they looked luminous. As we neared the bottom, I noticed there were great jagged slabs of slag everywhere along with sections of broken concrete that looked to have been part of sidewalks at one time. Ancient lengths of cement drainage conduits rose from the refuse along with rusted staffs of rebar and old porcelain sewer piping that must have been down there for decades and decades. Sure, first it had been a quarry, then a junk pit, then a body dump.
The shadows grew long and I felt Janie slide her hand in mine and I was glad for the feel of it. I gripped it tightly. Things rustled in pockets of spreading dark. Birds winged from one wrecked vehicle to the next. A rat stood atop a rusting engine block, watching us pass. The trail wound through the wreckage and bones, zig-zagging this way and that. Somebody had beat the trail through so it was definitely in use.
But I bet they don’t go down here after dark.
I kept going as night settled in. There were things jutting from the shadows everywhere. I tripped over a curled piece of rebar and almost went down. I dug a flashlight from my back. Working batteries were getting scarce now, but I didn’t like the idea of gutting myself on jagged metal.
“Nice place,” Texas Slim said.