by Sharon Sala
They were both dead before midnight.
Roland wasn’t certain if they were dead because they’d killed each other, or from blood loss due to the internal hemorrhages they’d both suffered. All he knew was that of the three sets he’d tested, they were the only ones that had died so quickly, proving it was the sap, not the leaves, that held the strongest concentration of Triple H. Roland hadn’t created a new drug, he had created a monster. It was the ultimate high that kept on giving and giving until, ultimately, it took the only thing the user had left.
Life.
He thought about the sap that had been all over Danny’s and Porter’s skin and clothes, and felt sick. They were going to die. He didn’t know when, but he knew it as surely as he knew his own name that they couldn’t last long.
This wasn’t supposed to happen, and he was scared as hell. He looked down at himself. Even though he’d taken extreme precautions, they might not have been enough. He’d worn two layers of clothing into the lab, plus his lab coat and surgical gloves and a mask.
Suddenly he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The sky was scattered with clouds as he ran outside, making it difficult for him to see, but he wasn’t going to waste time going back inside to get a lantern. He could see enough to do what he had to do. He hurried to the shed, got a can of charcoal-starter fluid, then hurried over to the barrel he used to burn his garbage. He stripped where he stood, dropping everything into the barrel, including his shoes and socks. The gloves were the last things he removed.
The night was still, the air thick with humidity. He wondered if it would rain again before morning, then wondered why he cared. The harvest was a joke. There was nothing to harvest here but death.
He emptied the can of starter fluid into the barrel, then stepped back a couple of feet, struck a match and tossed it. As it passed over the barrel, the air ignited with a loud, roaring whoosh. Roland felt himself flying through the air backward, then landing on his back several feet away. When he could breathe without choking, he rolled over onto his hands and knees, and quickly crawled out of reach of the flames.
Finally, when he was far enough way to be safe, he stood up, then ran his fingers over his face and neck. The smell of singed hair was thick in his nostrils, and his skin felt as if he’d been out in the sun too long.
“Shit,” he muttered, and then ran for the house.
That had been last night, and now here he was in the sheds, breathing air that was probably polluted with Triple H and staring at the blackened grass around the barrel. There was a thin gray spiral of smoke still rising from the ashes.
It was the shoes.
Leather and rubber weren’t easy to burn.
Out in the field, Danny and Porter Monroe worked like two madmen, slinging the cut stalks onto the wagon by the armfuls.
When they’d showed up for work this morning, he’d been surprised. Their attitudes the night before had not been good, yet they’d come back. Today, though, there had been a look in their eyes that left him nervous, and a purpose in their behavior he couldn’t quite identify. A short while ago, he’d seen them accidentally run into each other out in the field, then throw down the stalks and trade punches.
He couldn’t quit thinking about the last pair of rats—the ones that had started gnawing on each other’s feet. When the Monroe brothers came back with this last load, he was sending them home. He didn’t want to be anywhere in their vicinity when they began to come undone.
The last time Ally had been this far up the mountain, Clifton Nelson had still been alive. But after he’d passed and left his property to a distant nephew who turned out to be Roland Storm, she’d had no occasion to come back. Storm had taken up residence with the attitude that he wanted to be left alone, and the people in Blue Creek, as well as the ones on the mountain, had gladly abided by his wishes.
The ruts left from the recent rain were deep but beginning to dry. Still, the axles of regular vehicles were too far apart to match those of an ATV, so Ally was forced to make her own path along the side of the road, which made the going slow and rough.
Finally she began to recognize landmarks and knew she was close. Reluctantly, she drove the ATV off the road and hid it from sight, then started walking through the woods.
The going was harder than she had imagined. She stumbled often, nearly went down more than once, and before she’d gone a quarter of a mile, had taken a hard fall.
She caught her toe on a tree root that had been uncovered by the recent rains, and went flying. Winded from the impact, she struggled to catch a breath. Only when she was able to draw oxygen into her lungs did she begin to feel pain. Her chin was burning, as were the palms of her hands. Tears shot across her line of vision as she rolled over onto her back and willed herself not to cry.
“Damn stupid foot,” she muttered, and slapped the ground with the flat of her hands.
Soon she was up, but the fall forced her to move slower, which only heightened her frustration. Frustration soon gave way to stress, and stress to strain, as she clambered over roots and rocks. She was making progress, but it was painfully slow.
Finally, when she saw the backside of the barn through the trees, she knew she’d arrived. As she paused, a case of nerves shot a dose of adrenaline racing through her system.
She’d done it.
She was here.
Now what?
She stood for a few moments, studying the lay of the land, then decided to move a little closer. If Danny and Porter were supposed to be helping Roland Storm harvest his herbs, then they should be in the field. In any other circumstances, she would have driven right up to Storm’s property, then out to the fields and confronted them on the spot. But after the way Danny and Porter had behaved about their clothes, she was afraid.
She took care to stay concealed as she moved past the buildings, then to the fenced-in land beyond. She thought she could hear a tractor running, but the sound was muffled by distance, as well as the trees, and she wasn’t sure.
Focused on nothing but seeing Danny and Porter, she all but fell over the dead buck in her path, then stifled a scream that was more disgust than fear. The scent of decaying flesh was strong as she circled it, and she couldn’t help wondering why the hunter who’d shot it had left without taking either the rack or the meat. It wasn’t until she got a closer look that she realized it hadn’t been shot. The animal’s face looked as if it had caved in. Over the years, she’d seen plenty of animals brought down for food, but never one quite like this. She vaguely noticed the blood head high on a tree near to the buck, but she had no idea what it meant and kept walking.
Less than fifty yards away, she came upon a dead possum, then, a bit farther on, a skunk. After that, she found a rabbit and three birds, then an owl, then an assortment of small rodents, and she realized that she could smell death in every direction. Also puzzling was the fact that no carnivores were among the dead, and that they had not fed off the carcasses. She couldn’t help but wonder what they might know that humans didn’t.
The hair on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end. Something was horribly wrong. She couldn’t imagine what could be killing the wildlife with such abandon, but whatever it was, she had a bone-deep certainty that it involved her brothers. She began to hurry, desperate to find them. Then, when she finally did, she wished she hadn’t.
She saw Danny first, Danny with the broad shoulders and round face and with skin as red as his hair. When he wasn’t staggering, he was moving at a jerky, frenetic pace. Porter was on the other side of a wagon, tossing an armload of stalks into the air without aim. Somewhere he’d lost his hat, and he kept swiping at his face with his hands. She frowned as she watched him, thinking that she’d never seen Porter leave the house without shaving, but he must have, because she could see the dark stubble from here. The longer she stood, the more she began to see she’d been wrong. That wasn’t the beginnings of a beard on Porter’s face; it was ants. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny black ants.
“Good Lord,” Ally whispered, and suddenly looked down at the ground, imagining that they were crawling up her feet and legs, too.
Then, before she could panic, she heard what could only be described as a scream. It was part rage and part pain, and she looked up just as Porter began digging and slapping at his face. When he began tearing off his clothes, she started to shake.
He was screaming and shouting, cursing in obscenities she’d never heard. Danny moved toward him and got a punch in the face for his troubles. Blood spurted. When she saw Danny bend over, then spit out what looked like a tooth, she thought she was going to throw up.
“Oh, God…oh, God…please make them stop.”
She didn’t know she’d spoken aloud until a bird that she’d startled lifted off from the branches over her head, squawking as it flew.
Immediately, Danny and Porter stopped fighting and looked into the trees. Even though she knew they couldn’t see her, she felt threatened.
While she was debating about what to do, Roland Storm appeared in her line of vision. She watched her brothers waving their arms and pointing, then saw Storm pivot toward the trees where she was hiding and realized they’d told him what they’d seen. Granted, it was just a bird taking flight, but if something illicit was going on out there, then they were likely to look into it, and she would be in danger.
To her horror, Storm waved his arms at her brothers, as if ordering them back to work, then began walking toward the woods.
Ally panicked. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew she couldn’t let herself be found. She began running and within seconds was down again. This time her knees took the brunt of the fall. Ignoring the pain, she got up and ran, choosing the densest part of the forest to stay concealed.
She ran with limbs slapping her face and brush tearing at her clothes. The muscles in her ankle were burning from the fall, there was a stitch in her side that hurt when she drew breath, but she didn’t stop, and she never looked back.
Just as she was reaching the end of her endurance, she saw the ATV. She didn’t take time to push it out of the brush where she’d hidden it but instead leapt into the seat and started it up. Sobbing with relief as the motor revved, she put it in gear and took off.
The ATV flew out of the trees with Ally on it as if it had been shot from a gun. She went airborne over the ditch before landing hard in the road. It took all her skills to stay upright, and when she finally gained control, she rode off down the mountain as fast as the four-wheeler would take her.
One mile passed, then another and another, and just when she was convinced that she was going to make it, the engine began to sputter and the ATV began to slow, until finally it rolled to a stop.
“No, no, no,” Ally muttered, and slapped the steering wheel with both hands.
She turned the key, trying to start it again, but all she got for her trouble was a sputter and a pop. That was when she noticed the fuel gauge. It was sitting on Empty.
She turned around, her heart hammering against her breast as she searched the road behind her. There was nothing there, but she thought she could hear the sound of a truck engine coming down the grade. Fear lent her new strength as she leapt off the ATV and once again rolled it off the road into the trees. This time, when she ran, she was running for her life.
It was almost one-thirty in the afternoon when Wes reached Dooley Brown’s mailbox. He gave it a thump as he passed, then headed up the driveway, thinking of what he had in the refrigerator that he could eat without having to cook. He had the key in the lock and was turning the knob when he heard someone scream.
The skin crawled on the back of his neck as his mind slammed him back to the day of the bombing. Women had been crying and screaming then, but not Margie. She’d never had a chance to scream.
He turned abruptly, only to realize he wasn’t at Fort Benning, after all. Instead, he was standing on the doorstep and watching Ally Monroe coming out of the trees. The braid had come undone, and her hair was flying out behind her like a sunlit veil. There was a tear in her shirt and blood on her face, but it was the terror in her scream that sent him toward her.
He caught her in midair, taking the full weight of her body as she clung to him in terror. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her legs around his waist. Her breath was coming in short gasps and jerks, and she was trembling so hard that she couldn’t speak.
“Ally! What happened? Talk to me! Did someone hurt you? Was it Storm?”
As soon as he mentioned the name, she moaned and hid her face against his neck. At first he thought she was just crying, but then he realized she was saying the same thing over and over again.
“Hide me,” she begged. “Hide me…hide me…hide me.”
Wes tightened his hold as he bolted for the house. The door was still ajar as he shoved his way in, then turned just as quickly to kick the door shut. He locked it behind him, then carried her to the sofa. Even as he was running his hands over her body to check for wounds, he could see that she was in shock. Her pupils were dilated, and she was bordering on unconscious.
There was blood on her shirt and scratches all over her face and arms, but he couldn’t find a mortal wound anywhere.
“Ally…I need you to talk to me. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“My brothers…dead birds…dead squirrels…dead rabbits and skunks. Big deer…all dead…everything is dead.” Then she pointed toward the door. “He’s coming. Hide. We have to hide.”
“Who’s coming, Ally? Is it Storm?”
She moaned and then covered her face.
He took that as a yes and ran to the windows. When he was sure both the road and the yard were still clear, he made a quick sweep through his house, making sure everything was locked down, then ran back to the living room.
Ally was nowhere in sight.
His heart stopped.
The doors were still locked, so she couldn’t be gone. A sudden flash of fear jabbed deep in his gut as he thought about her dead in his arms. Then he cursed, frustrated with the part of him that kept shifting from past to present. That was Margie, not Ally, who was dead. He shook off the fear and ran through the house, calling her name.
He found her down on her belly beside the bed and at first thought she trying to hide beneath it. He dropped down beside her.
“Ally…”
“The rifle. Uncle Doo’s rifle.”
Wes’s eyes widened. He’d been sleeping on a gun?
“Under the bed?”
“Yes! Yes!” Then she sat up and grabbed Wes by both arms. “Something’s wrong up there. Something terrible that he doesn’t want anyone to know.”
She covered her face with her hands and started to shake.
Wes dropped flat on his belly, then reached beneath the bed. Within seconds, he felt the barrel of a rifle, then the stock. It was tied to the frame! He yanked at the ropes. The rifle fell to the floor. He dragged it out, only to find it was unloaded.
“Ally?”
She heard him calling her name, but she couldn’t make herself focus enough to look up.
Wes grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Ally! The gun isn’t loaded. Where is the ammunition?”
She pointed beneath the bed again, this time toward the headboard.
Within seconds, Wes was back on his belly. He felt the first box almost instantly, and as he was dragging it out, found a second.
He spilled shells out onto the floor and loaded the gun where he sat.
“Stay here,” he said shortly, and moments later he was gone.
Ally heard the front door open, then she heard it shut. By the time she got to her feet and into the front room, Wes was nowhere in sight. Scared out of her mind, she dragged herself into the kitchen, got a butcher knife from the drawer and then crawled into the pantry. With the door slightly ajar, she would be able to hear.
Then a new fear hit her. Exactly what was it that she expected to hear? Wes coming back, of course, but what if he didn’t
? What if Roland Storm saw him first and ambushed him?
“Lord help us,” Ally prayed. Besides being scared out of her mind that Storm might get to her, she couldn’t bear to think of anything happening to Wes.
If only she had a phone to call the sheriff. Then she groaned. Exactly what would she tell him if she did call—that Roland Storm had hired her brothers to harvest a crop that had ants all over it? He hadn’t threatened her. Truth was, he was the one who had a grievance. She had trespassed. She could mention the dead animals, but the sheriff would probably tell her to call the EPA in case there was bad water in the area. She had nothing concrete to tell him, even if she did have a phone. At that point, she started to cry.
“Please, God…keep my brothers safe—and let Wes Holden come back.”
Wes ran out of his house with the rifle in his hand and ran straight into his past. Before he’d passed the mailbox, the trees and bushes had turned into sand dunes and the ditches had become bunkers.
He started up the road with the rifle held loosely at his side, running at a crouched lope. A small crop duster was buzzing the treetops as it made a wide loop to fly back to its target, but in Wes’s mind, it was an Iraqi bomber. He looked up, watched the clouds turning into heat-seekers and went belly down in the ditch. The heat of the sun on the back of his neck turned into burns from a flash fire, and the screech of a hunting hawk turned into a dying man’s screams. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, waiting for the barrage to pass.
His heart was still pounding as he raised himself up on his elbows, and as he did, a terrapin poked its head out of its shell only a few feet in front of him. For Wes, it was like turning off one switch and turning on another. All of a sudden, the bunker morphed back into a ditch, and the sand dunes into trees and hills.
