by Joe Hart
~
The baby struggled against Lynn’s chest as she ran, its movements spastic but weaker than earlier. She choked and coughed, the white smoke that pursued them down the rows of corn catching up and blocking their path ahead. She didn’t look back but could feel the heat rising, a step or two behind the smoldering air.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeated, a mantra in time with her falling footsteps.
The ground tried to hold her feet down, the soft dirt becoming hands grasping and pulling. She stumbled and fell, managing to get one arm out to break their fall while keeping the little boy tucked close to her body. She coughed again, a dry racking pain building in her lungs as nothing came out of her mouth. She spit and stood, the row before her obscured white as a blank page.
A crackling sound filled her ears. Filled the world. She turned, throwing a look over her shoulder.
The cornfield had caught fire.
It sprang into flame as if the stalks were coated in gasoline. The fire leapt forward, jumping from one row to the next, its massive height crouching down to feast on the fertilized corn.
Lynn faced forward and pelted on, her legs burning as if the flames had already reached them. The wind swept toward them, peeling the smoke back enough for her to see the field stretched out another half mile or more. They would never outrun the blaze. The breeze shifted again to her back and the field was lost in the white haze. She sobbed, tears drying instantly on her face. She slowed and then stopped, crouching down as low as she could get before collapsing completely. The baby cried, struggled against her and she exposed his face.
He was beautiful.
Even smudged with afterbirth and soot from the fire, his large eyes shone with awareness. They closed as he wailed and then opened, looking her fully in the face.
“Hush honey, it’s all right. I won’t let the fire get you,” Lynn said, slowly balling up the loose fabric that swaddled the child. She wept, her heart slamming so hard against her breastbone the sound blocked out the crackling flames that rushed toward them. She took a last look at the infant’s face and saw it was Carah she held now. Her daughter, so sweet and small, her little body hot against hers.
The cotton she had balled up to smother the baby with fell from her hand and she shook with silent sobs. Her heart thrummed louder, making the ground shake and the corn tremble and bend. She knew then that it was the end, they would burn together.
The helicopter emerged from the smog and circled directly over them, pounding the smoke away and flattening the corn. The wind from the rotors whipped her hair about like striking snakes that snapped at her face. Lynn raised her head from her daughter and saw the chopper come closer, its door sliding open to reveal a man wearing a bright orange jumpsuit along with an oxygen mask hiding his face. He leapt from the aircraft when it was still ten feet from the ground and ran to them, his steps sure and strong.
“Come on! Get up! We have to go!” he yelled, helping her stand. His fingers found the inside of her arm and he pulled her along the row where the chopper touched down, its landing struts sinking deep into the soft ground. They ducked as they neared the door and then they were inside and the man in the mask was buckling her into a wide bench seat. The ground dropped away just as the fire reached the chopper, the heat so intense she squeezed her eyes shut, knowing the fuel tanks would ignite and they would be blow apart in a single hot flash.
But then they were airborne, the sinking sensation in her chest was gravity doing its best to keep them on the earth and losing. The field angled away and trees took over the view before the craft leveled out.
“Ma’am, let me take the baby from you, okay?”
Lynn held the bundle tighter, staring at the man’s mask, his eyes two reflective black discs. There was no way she was giving up Carah, not now, not after waiting for so long to hold her again. The man peeled the oxygen unit off revealing tightly cropped blond hair and a razorblade nose.
“It’s all right, I just want to make sure it’s unharmed.” He held out his hands.
Lynn looked down at her baby, at Carah, but it wasn’t her little girl. It was a newborn, his eyes wide now, staring back at her in wonder, pink hands beside his cheeks. She smiled at him and his mouth crinkled at one corner, the suggestion of a grin.
She transferred the baby to the man, who laid him on a padded stretcher ten times too large for his small form. Lynn watched for a time, closing her eyes whenever they skimmed over a rough patch of air and finally looked away, focusing her gaze out the window to where the earth burned below.
Chapter 44
It took twelve hours for the area to be deemed safe before Lynn could lead the authorities back to the Barder farm.
The wind continued to blow out of the east, shoving the fire onward at a relentless pace. It consumed everything in its path and left behind a scorched landscape, appearing as if God had created the world in charcoal instead of color.
Sheriff Enson drove the cruiser she rode in and wouldn’t speak or look at her as they wound the roads into the farmstead, stopping only to push the occasional fallen tree out of the way. When they arrived with three other units behind them, she got out and jogged ahead, not waiting for the portly sheriff to catch up. Enson waddled behind, his steps unhurried as he glanced around at the smoldering pile that once was the Barders’ home.
When he entered the Silo where Lynn had disappeared, he spoke.
“I’d like to remind you again, Lynn, Vincent Barder is a highly respected member of the community in both our neighboring counties and your statements are—”
He lost the rest of his words as he saw Lynn emerge from the hatch in the floor with two women in tow who in turn carried small boys, neither older than two years of age. His mouth slowly worked, trying to form the rest of his sentence but stopped when Danzig climbed out of the hole carrying Siri in his arms.
“Bitchel, shut your worthless mouth and get a fucking ambulance out here,” Danzig rumbled.
Several deputies strode into the silo, took one look at the bedraggled group and went sprinting back to their cruisers. In under ten minutes an ambulance, lights flashing in strobed timing with its siren, came barreling up the drive and stopped beside the blackened structure.
“Are you sure?” Siri asked Lynn for the third time as she was loaded onto a stretcher and hauled toward the waiting doors of the vehicle.
“He’s fine, darling. He’s waiting for you at the hospital. You’ll be in the same room with him.”
“Thank you.” Siri’s eyes sparkled with tears. Squeezing Lynn’s hand she asked, “Sheriff Gray?”
Lynn blinked, her lips pressing together. She shook her head.
Siri’s fingers unclasped from her own as the EMTs gently lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance and let it lock into place. As the vehicle drove away, moving slower this time, a forensics van pulled to a stop in the yard, a group of people piling out already wearing white jumpsuits. They moved to the rear of the van and began to unload several cases of equipment.
Lynn turned away and walked toward the charred field that had been an emerald expanse the day before. The early morning sun was hidden beneath a ruffled mixture of clouds and the air was finally cool. Danzig fell into step beside her as she walked.
“Shouldn’t go down there, Lynn.”
“I know.”
“Then let’s go back. I don’t want to see if…” His voice trailed off.
“I need to.”
They reached the edge of the field and she swept it with her eyes.
There was no evidence that the plain had ever held crops. Its surface was a black rubble caked with ash. Clumps of matter smoked, trailing slender lines into the sky where they blended with the clouds. A humped form drew her attention and she strode to it, her heart picking up speed with each step.
The man’s body lay partially on its stomach and side. It was shrunken to the size of an adolescent, the skin and muscles blackened and hard over bone that s
hone through it drab patches. The skull was tipped back, mouth open to reveal pebbled teeth studding its exposed jaw. One of its knees was bent inward, the lower part of the leg jutting at a ninety-degree angle away from the body. Its arms were out in front of it, one hand dug into the ground, the other reaching for something.
“It’s not him,” Lynn said, stepping away from the body. She made to move past Danzig to where the burnt husk of the pickup sat beneath a fallen tree. Danzig caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to his chest. She tried to push him away, to struggle free, but he was too strong and when he began to stroke her hair the tears came flooding out that she’d held onto all night.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, and she was reminded of speaking the same words to Siri’s boy in the burning corn. A teardrop landed on her hair and soaked in as the big man heaved a sigh, long and slow.
They stood that way for long time, the sky above mirroring the land below, the wind smelling of slag.
When they had both quieted, she detached herself from his arms and they walked toward the silo which bustled with activity. Deputies and forensics personnel moved past one another in hurried strides. Another ambulance had arrived, its lights running in silence. Mitchel Enson sat on the hood of a cruiser, staring at a spot of ground several feet in front of his boots. He didn’t look up as they passed.
When they came even with the silo door a young deputy holding a digital clipboard spotted them and held out a hand.
“You two aren’t thinking of leaving, are you?”
“She needs her rest and so do I,” Danzig said. “If you have questions we’ll be at Wheaton Medical.”
“Hold on, I need to ask you a few questions first.”
“Can’t it wait?” Lynn said.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. First off, how many men did you say were holding your group?”
She sighed, her shoulders drooping with resignation. “Three. Dr. Vincent Barder and two of his three sons, Adam and Darrin. Ryan Barder is dead too but I have no idea where his body is.”
“Okay. See that’s where we’re running into a problem because we’ve got a fourth person down there, the EMTs are bringing him up now. He was found in a sealed room adjacent to an elevator system. There was an open hatch a lot like the one in the silo in the adjoining room.”
Lynn frowned and looked at Danzig who shook his head.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes ma’am, barely. Looks like he fell in through the hatch. His face is a little burned and it looks like he was beaten badly and he’s got a gunshot wound on his side—”
She didn’t hear the rest since she was already sprinting to the silo door, heart clamoring in an unsteady rhythm—alive, alive, he said ‘alive’.
She skidded to a stop at the top of the stairway as two EMTs emerged carrying a stretcher between them.
Gray lay upon it, his eyes closed.
His face was red as if he’d spent too long in the sun on a hot day and a white bandage, blazingly clean against his filthy coveralls, was blotched with blood on his stomach. But even from a distance, she saw the rise and fall of his chest.
Then she was at his side, holding his bloodied hand, stroking his arm that was devoid of hair from heat. She kept pace with the EMTs, her breath shuddering in and out of her, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off his face.
“Holy shit,” Danzig said, taking a place on the opposite side of the stretcher. “I can’t believe it.”
The pale light fell on Gray’s face as they stepped into the day and his eyelids scrunched shut further. Lynn laid her palm against his face.
“We’re here, Mac, you’re safe. You’re going to be okay, honey.”
His eyelids fluttered at the sound of her voice and they came open, his pupils dilating and then finding her. He blinked and tried to smile, only one side of his mouth rising, just like the child’s had in the helicopter.
“Took you so long?”
She laughed. “Apologies.”
He licked his cracked lips as Danzig squeezed his arm.
“Hey brother,” Danzig said.
“Hey yourself. Fucking luck, huh?”
“Fucking luck.”
Gray shut his eyes and for a moment Lynn thought he’d passed out again but then he squeezed her hand.
“If my legs still work after this, I’d like to take you dancing.”
“You were a terrible dancer before, I’m guessing you couldn’t get much worse.”
He smiled again as moisture fell on his cheek.
“Don’t cry, honey,” he said as they neared the back of the ambulance, its rear doors open and waiting.
Lynn smiled and smoothed back his hair.
“I’m not. It’s raining.”
The EMTs slid the stretcher into the vehicle as Lynn and Danzig climbed in, holding their positions at his side. The doors slammed shut and then they were moving down the long drive as the rain fell in great drops that became solid sheets, and hissed against the embers that winked out with their cool touch.
The End
Author’s Note
First and foremost, thank you for reading. To know that you’ve spent your time on something I’ve created is the highest compliment and I hope you enjoyed the ride.
So I had this idea and it began the wonderful way many writer’s ideas begin with in the form of a question: What if?
What if there were no sociopaths or serial killers stalking the streets of the world, hiding in plain sight? What if we’d conquered that particular mar on society by finding a gene that, when active, could give way to those tendencies? Would anyone have a problem with inoculating their children at a young age? Of course not, we do that now to ensure they don’t catch terrible diseases that could end their lives. But could we ever be rid of pure evil in that form forever? Would we be able to control it, or would life find a way?
These are the questions I asked myself while pondering Widow Town. The Tabula Rasa, or “blank slate” theory immediately came to mind while I was researching and this was one of the bases I built the premise on. The balance between nature and nurture has been debated for centuries, and it’s a terrifying thought to realize that each one of us perhaps has the potential to become something terrible given the right circumstances. I also asked if there were a gene that could contribute to a person developing without empathy, without a conscience, could it be turned off? And if it could, would there be any other way for evil to form, through environment and treatment of the individual? This led me in the direction of placing this particular tale in the future. I do enjoy science fiction but it isn’t my forte so I stayed near the shallow end of the pool when developing technology or referring to some new break through. I also wondered, how much does the world really change over time? Our technology changes of course, along with methods in science, religion, politics, but at the center of it all, do we really change?
Of course there is no “murder gene” but the what-if in this case swept me away with possibilities about how a society would react to a threat that they thought was gone. How they wouldn’t be able to fathom that a monster in human skin could live next door, and they’d never know it, how they would treat a man who believed in something preposterous.
Once again, I hope you enjoyed the book and I appreciate any and all feedback, whether it be a review online or a simple email to tell me your thoughts. Thank you for accompanying me on these journeys, and I’ll continue to make my best efforts in creating new places for us to travel.
Joe Hart
February 2014
Other Books by Joe Hart
Lineage (novel)
Singularity (novel)
EverFall (novel)
The River Is Dark (novel)
The Waiting (novel)
Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror (collection)
The Line Unseen (short story)
The Edge of Life (short story)
Outpost (short story)
Joe Hart, Widow Town
