by John Russo
The man was tall, lean, and wearing a worn brown suit. He walked across the rear of the room, and came down a path cleared for him by the mourners. All eyes stared at the large wooden mallet he carried. He walked slowly through the room, looking hard at the father of the dead child. He approached the coffin and gave the mallet to Mr. Dorsey. At the same time, placing his left hand sympathetically on the grieved father’s shoulder, Reverend Michaels produced in his right hand a large metal spike similar to the kind that are used in the construction of railroads.
The Reverend handed the spike to Mr. Dorsey.
The faces of the assembled mourners were tense and expectant as they all looked in the direction of the coffin. There was no sound now but a few shuffling footsteps. The dim light in the room seemed to accentuate the silence.
As most of the congregation watched, Mr. Dorsey placed the spike to his dead child’s forehead, and then, with the reverberating sound of wood against metal, the father pounded the spike deep into the skull of his daughter.
Tears streamed down the man’s stolid, silent face.
Mrs. Dorsey screamed, unable to control herself, and continued to sob in anguish in the arms of several of the women who rushed forward to comfort her.
Suddenly the screen door burst open and slammed against the farmhouse wall with a crash. A small boy stood in the doorway, excited and out of breath, his eyes on Reverend Michaels as the symbol of authority. “It fell!” he cried. “The bus! It rolled over and over! I was right there! It went right over the hill…everybody…a-all of them dead, I think!”
Everyone in the congregation began shouting questions at once. A man in the back of the room near the door began shaking the boy to get more information out of him. “Where did it happen? When?” he demanded.
“At the crossroads. A few minutes ago. The bus wrecked and fell,” the boy repeated, trying to catch his breath.
Reverend Michaels became stern. He shouted for the attention of his congregation. They faced him, waiting for his instructions. They needed the authority of his voice, though they all could have predicted what he would say. If there were dead people on the bus and if some would die later as the result of injuries, the spikes needed to be driven into their skulls to ensure that the peace of death would be final and complete as the Lord had intended.
“You all know what needs to be done,” Reverend Michaels intoned solemnly. “But, we must hurry. There is not much time.”
The congregation began to move, people scrambling, hurrying out of the room. Several men had bags of spikes, and mallets, which had become symbols of death and were often brought to funerals. Others always carried these items with them in their cars.
Bert Miller turned to face his daughters. Ann, terribly frightened, had buried her face in her hands. She backed against the wall as her father moved toward her. “I don’t want to go!” she yelled desperately, cringing from her father.
Bert seized Ann by the wrists and shook her to bring her face up so he could stare into her eyes. “You’re going! And so’s Sue Ellen. The only one who ain’t goin’ is Karen, because she’s pregnant. She can stay here and wait for us till we get back.”
The rest of the people had already piled out of the room as Ann and Sue Ellen were shoved out ahead of their father. Karen watched, scared and shaking.
CHAPTER 2
Excerpt from a Civil Defense broadcast made during the emergency which beset the eastern half of the United States ten years ago:
“…UP-TO-THE-MINUTE REPORTS INFORM US THAT THE SIEGE FIRST DOCUMENTED TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO HAS INDEED SPREAD OVER MOST OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. MEDICAL AND SCENTIFIC ADVISORS HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO THE WHITE HOUSE, AND REPORTERS ON THE SCENE IN WASHINGTON INFORM US THAT THE PRESIDENT IS PLANNING TO MAKE PUBLIC THE RESULTS OF THAT CONFERENCE IN AN ADDRESS TO THE NATION OVER YOUR CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY NETWORK…
“…THE STRANGE BEINGS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN ALARMING NUMBERS SEEM TO HAVE CERTAIN PREDICTABLE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR. IN THE FEW HOURS FOLLOWING INITIAL REPORTS OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH, AND APPARENTLY DERANGED ATTACKS ON THE LIVES OF PEOPLE TAKEN COMPLETELY OFF GUARD, IT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT THE ALIEN BEINGS HAVE MANY HUMAN PHYSICAL AND BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS. HYPOTHESES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR AIMS HAVE TO THIS POINT BEEN SO VARIED AND SO DIVERSE THAT WE MUST ONLY REPORT THESE FACTORS TO BE UNKNOWN. TEAMS OF SCIENTISTS AND PHYSICIANS HAVE THE CORPSES OF SEVERAL OF THE AGGRESSORS, AND THESE CORPSES ARE BEING STUDIED AT THIS MOMENT FOR CLUES THAT MIGHT NEGATE OR CONFIRM EXISTING THEORIES. THE MOST OVERWHELMING FACT IS THAT THESE BEINGS ARE INFILTRATING THROUGH URBAN AND RURAL AREAS THROUGHOUT THE EASTERN HALF OF THE NATION IN FORCES OF VARYING NUMBER, AND IF THEY HAVE NOT YET EVIDENCED THEMSELVES IN YOUR AREA, PLEASE—TAKE EVERY AVALABLE PRECAUTION! ATTACK MAY COME AT ANY TIME, IN ANY PLACE, WITHOUT WARNING. REPEATING THE IMPORTANT FACTS FROM OUR PREVIOUS REPORTS: THERE IS AN AGGRESSIVE FORCE—AN ARMY—OF UNEXPLAINED, UNIDENTIFIED, HUMANOID BEINGS. THEY HAVE APPEARED, AT RANDOM, AT VARIOUS URBAN AND RURAL LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE EASTERN STATES. THESE BEINGS ARE TOTALLY AGGRESSIVE AND IRRATIONAL IN THEIR VIOLENCE. CIVIL DEFENSE EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY, AND INVESTIGATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF THE AGGRESSORS ARE BEING CONDUCTED. ALL CITIZENS ARE URGED TO TAKE UTMOST PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES TO DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST THIS INSIDIOUS ALIEN FORCE. THESE BEINGS ARE WEAK IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH, HOWEVER, AND ARE EASILY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM HUMANS BY THEIR DEFORMED APPEARANCE. THEY ARE USUALLY UNARMED BUT APPEAR CAPABLE OF HANDLING WEAPONS. THEY HAVE APPEARED WITHOUT ANY REASON OR PLAN, UNLIKE ORGANIZED ARMIES AS WE KNOW THEM. THEY SEEM TO BE DRIVEN BY THE URGES OF ENTRANCED OR OBSESSED MINDS. THEY APPEAR TO BE TOTALLY UNTHINKING. THEY CAN—I REPEAT—THEY CAN BE STOPPED BY IMMOBILIZATION; THEY CAN BE STOPPED BY BLINDING OR DISMEMBERMENT. THEY ARE, REMEMBER, WEAKER IN STRENGTH THAN THE AVERAGE ADULT HUMAN—BUT THEIR STRENGTH IS IN NUMBERS, IN SURPRISE, AND IN THE FACT THAT THEIR EXISTENCE IS BEYOND OUR NORMAL REALM OF UNDERSTANDING. THEY APPEAR TO BE IRRATIONAL, NON-COMMUNICATIVE BEINGS, AND THEY ARE DEFINITELY TO BE CONSIDERED OUR ENEMIES IN WHAT WE MUST CALL A STATE OF DIRE EMERGENCY. IF ENCOUNTERED, THEY ARE TO BE AVOIDED OR DESTROYED. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU ALLOW YOURSELVES OR YOUR FAMILIES TO BE ALONE OR UNGUARDED WHILE THIS MENACE PREVAILS.
“…THESE BEINGS ARE FLESH-EATERS. THEY ARE EATING THE FLESH OF THE PEOPLE THEY KILL. THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THEIR ONSLAUGHT IS THEIR DEPRAVED, INSANE QUEST FOR HUMAN FLESH. I REPEAT: THESE ALIEN BEINGS ARE EATING THE FLESH OF THEIR VICTIMS…”
CHAPTER 3
Sheriff Conan McClellan was sipping a cup of morning coffee in his office when the report of the wrecked bus came over the police band. He knew the crossroads and the embankment where the bus had reportedly gone over. The initial report did not mention any fire, and it was not a steep drop. Depending on how fast the bus was going when it had gone over the edge, and if it had managed to avoid the big trees before bringing itself to a halt, there could be survivors.
McClellan made sure that a call had gone out for extra ambulances and emergency medical supplies from all the nearby communities. He alerted the emergency rooms of the nearest hospitals. He also phoned the morgue. Then he got into a squad car driven by one of his men, Deputy Greene, a rookie, and told Greene to head out toward the scene of the accident. Greene was nervous but trying not to show it; he had not yet had occasion to encounter any dead men on the job as a policeman and from what he had heard from the report and knowing the preparations his superior had made, he was pretty sure he was going to encounter his first bodies that day.
Sheriff McClellan was a good man, with the upsetting but perhaps necessary habit of practically hunting for ways to baptize his men by fire. Once they had been through a crisis without buckling, he knew he could depend on them. And, he felt, they knew they could then depend on themselves. Greene was about to become very dependable, McClellan mused.
The Sheriff, himself, was more nervous on this call than he usually was, and he knew why. The bus wreck they were fast approaching reminded him too much of th
e first accident that he had covered as a rookie policeman. A bus carrying grade-school children had been struck head-on by a truck overloaded with steel reinforcement rods, the kind that are used to reinforce concrete. The rods had been torn loose on impact and had hurtled like spears through the interior of the school bus, impaling many of the children and tearing off heads and arms. McClellan had almost resigned from the force as the result of that one accident, deciding his six-month career as a policeman was enough. Now, after twenty-six years, he felt he could face whatever the world could throw at him, no matter how terrible. He never showed his emotions, but he never forgot anything—or anyone—that touched him deeply. His men respected him, but thought he was a bit too thick-skinned to be human. McClellan knew it was the only way to survive his job.
Deputy Greene knew what he was headed for. He was thinking about the reports he’d heard on the car radio. If he had been alone he might have driven more slowly, in hopes of getting there after some of the disaster had been cleaned up. But with Sheriff McClellan sitting in the front seat, he could not dawdle. If he wished McClellan had picked someone else to drive him to the scene of the accident, he had the wisdom not to mention it.
With the light flashing and the siren screaming they were rapidly approaching the scene, and would be there in about ten minutes from the time they had departed police headquarters.
The bus had gone over the embankment after negotiating a steep climb in the highway and starting down the other side. A police barricade had been put up along the side of the road, and a patrolman was directing the emergency vehicles to the crash scene while directing other traffic to continue ahead. Luckily, there was rarely much traffic on this rural road, and if there were any survivors, they could be transferred quickly to a hospital. The patrolman waved McClellan’s car on, and Greene eased it up over the hill slowly to where they could see the bent and twisted guard rail about two hundred yards above the crossroads formed by a bridge over the river and the junction of three highways. There was no evidence of why the bus had gone out of control. Possibly it had been forced over by a car or truck which had kept going after the bus went over.
Greene pulled the car over, leaving the lights flashing, and he and the Sheriff got out. Far from being late on the scene, they seemed to be among the first to arrive which did not give Greene any comfort. There was one other patrol car, parked to one side, as much on the shoulder as possible, its lights still flashing. McClellan figured that the patrolman directing traffic had come from that car.
McClellan looked down along the path of the wrecked bus, but saw nobody moving toward it. In the distance, the bus was not clearly discernible; its fatal path had taken it into a thick growth of trees which now concealed the extent of the catastrophe.
McClellan motioned to Greene and told him to come along, as he began to work his way down toward the wrecked bus. They could see smoke rising out of the trees, but it was certainly not enough smoke for a big fire. Still, this did not give McClellan cause to expect large numbers of survivors; if there had been any, he reasoned, their first impulse would have been to go for help by climbing out of the woods and onto the road. Since nobody was climbing up, there was probably nobody able to climb. But he noticed that the weeds were tramped down and there were muddy footprints in places, as though, for some reason, a considerable number of people had made their way down toward the wreckage. McClellan did not understand that. If a group of people had gone down there, who were they and where could they be?
CHAPTER 4
Ann and Sue Ellen were spattered with blood, their carefully washed and ironed dresses now muddy and torn. Sue Ellen slipped and fell, losing her grip on the legs of the dead man she was helping to carry, and struck her face against the dead man’s shoe. A sob came from her throat. Bert Miller offered no word of sympathy or encouragement, but by his stern, angry looks bade his daughter get up and keep going. Sue Ellen dragged herself to her feet, picked up the legs of the corpse and kept going. Her father had the body by its arms, and he himself was out of breath. But he had to keep going. And so did she. Bert wanted his daughters to learn that life was hard, there were tasks to be done, and those with the proper moral fiber did what had to be done without complaining or expecting any reward for it on this earth. He had given Ann and Sue Ellen the choice of either helping to carry the dead or driving the spikes. They elected to carry the bodies of their own free will. So they must do that job. And they must get it done quickly. Before the authorities got to the scene to stop them. The authorities did not like to admit the necessity of spiking the dead, though it had clearly been necessary once before.
Sue Ellen and her father got the dead man to a clearing in the woods where other dead bodies were laid out. They dropped the man down, and the girl turned away as his head lolled crazily to one side, exposing the gash that had almost severed the head from its neck. Sue Ellen covered her eyes with her hands, then remembered too late that her hands were bloody. She pulled them away, but left a fresh smear of blood on each cheek. She began to cry. She could hear her father’s hoarse breathing as he rested for a moment and watched as Ann struggled while dragging the body of a three-year-old child through the weeds and into the clearing. A large wooden splinter, part of a sheared-off tree branch, was stuck in the child’s chest; the child’s mouth was open and its teeth were caked with blood. Bert Miller had made Ann drag the child’s body alone, while he and Sue Ellen carried the dead man, a much heavier burden. The man and the child were the last of the bodies to be carried from the wreckage of the bus. Others in the clearing had already begun to drive the spikes.
Ann and Sue Ellen collapsed on the ground, panting, near shock, not looking at each other, because each reminded the other of the horrible experience they had both been through. Each felt alone, frightened beyond comprehension, wanting to run and hide out of sight of the activity in the clearing, which filled them with such revulsion that they both shut their eyes against it. But they could hear it, the cacophony of wood against metal, the splitting of dead skulls, accompanied by the hoarse breathing and cries and comments of those who were using the spikes and mallets. The bus wreck had left no survivors. Reverend Michaels strode among the dead bodies, most of them horribly mangled, and over each one he stopped and hurriedly said the prayer designed to help ensure the eternal peace of death. Now and then, in his feverish work, he took time to encourage his parishioners and to praise them for having the strength to carry out God’s work.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Michaels shouted. “We must spike as many as possible before the police come!”
When they heard the sound of police sirens, the people became afraid and knew they must leave at once, even if they had not finished their work. Thirteen corpses had been spiked out of a total of thirty-four dead. Reverend Michaels shook his head, hoping his prayers would be sufficient for the unspiked bodies. Then he led his congregation out of the clearing and away from the woods, toward the valley from which they had come. They went quietly and furtively by a back way by which they would encounter no police or other intruders who might disapprove of what they had done, of how the dead had been treated. The Reverend prayed as he made his way through the woods, asking the Lord’s help for the twenty-one corpses that had not been spiked, asking Him to grant them Eternal Peace. He knew that they were easy prey to forces unbelievable in their horror.
At about the time that the last several bodies were being spiked, Sheriff McClellan and Deputy Greene were working their way down to where the bus lay broken and shattered. In the distance, they heard the rhythmical sounds of wood striking against metal and wondered what they were.
They searched the weeds with their eyes as they walked, half-expecting to find broken bodies thrown clear of the wreckage, but they saw nothing and there was no evidence of survivors.
When they reached the bus, it was empty.
There were some thin plumes of smoke rising from the body of the bus, but there seemed to be no danger of explosion. The inside appeared to
be a bloody mess. There was evidence of carnage on a dreadful scale, but no dead or wounded remained. All the passengers, dead or living, had disappeared. Amid the twisted metal and shards of broken glass, Greene’s eyes fell on a bloody severed hand, and it made him gag. He gulped and pointed, showing it to McClellan, who looked but said nothing. He himself had noticed what looked like a finger, or a piece of a finger, lying partially under a brand new powder-blue lady’s suitcase, but he did not feel it necessary to tell Greene. If they had wanted to sift through the debris, they would doubtless have found more bits and pieces of human bodies, along with broken teeth and eyeglasses, but at this point they were far more interested in what happened to the people who survived—or did not survive—this disaster.
McClellan knew then that the tramped down weeds leading from the road to the clearing must have been caused by a large group of people going to the site of the wrecked bus. They had carried off the dead bodies. Or the survivors, if there were any. But why? Perhaps they had felt it a necessary thing to do, fearing the bus might explode before the survivors could be rescued and the dead identified—except to McClellan there did not seem to be any real danger of an explosion. Whatever small fire had caused the smoke—perhaps a lit cigarette had fallen amongst some spilled luggage—had burned itself out quickly and had not been burning in the vicinity of any fuel lines likely to ignite.
