At first, I assumed there had been some sort of accident. Perhaps the steel mill over on Brook Avenue had caught fire, or some drunken dickheads car had veered off the road with fatal aplomb. My thoughts on the matter soon changed and my anxiety soon mounted. in tandem, with the ever-increasing sound of chaos coming from outside. At first it was only the sirens.
Then came the sound of howling - agonised and tortured.
I finally got to standing on legs that felt like lead, and slowly, numbly, made my way to the window that overlooked our backyard. The loudest wails were sounding from that direction. The curtains were still drawn, and I don’t mind admitting it took every ounce of my willpower and courage to pull those fuckers back. Taking a deep breath and steeling my nerves for what I may see, I pulled on the thin fabric that stood between normalcy and whatever I may learn of that had so rapidly sent my quiet neighbourhood into seeming chaos.
Animal lovers beware...here is what I saw.
I’m not sure why it was only the dogs that let their horror be known in those early moments. Perhaps it was because they had been roaming the streets all evening while their masters slept, and whatever came to end the world came on the night-time breeze, and reached them first.
Perhaps it was merely that their howling was louder than whatever else was going on out there, but howl they did. It sounded like every dog from Lassie to Cujo was getting in on it. Some of them out there were perhaps howling in animalistic compassion for their canine kin.
Most though, were howling because they were on fire.
On old man Joe’s lawn, (a frequent drinking buddy in the days when I still had drinking buddies), what I can only assume was his beloved dog, Sally, was a writhing mass of flame and smoke. I could make out two legs, feebly kicking at the uncaring skies for endless seconds before her hell-sent release.
Across from Joe’s place, the next garden over, a man was rolling on the ground tussling with what looked like the king of the Rottweiler kingdom, as it went for his throat, lashing out in its panic and in its pain. The fucking thing looked like a goddam meteor with teeth. I watched in horror as my neighbour - or whoever the hell he was, I mostly kept myself to myself since my bitch of a bride cut my balls off - lost his desperate fight against the flaming beast. The burning mound of mutt tore out his jugular in a geyser of blood, and as the man’s screams turned to liquid acquiescence, the poor, crazy, four-legged fucker succumbed to the flames that licked away at its flesh.
The two of them, man and beast, lay side by side. The torrent of blood that flooded from his ruined throat was almost enough to put out the flames that poured from the hound…almost.
To the rear of our garage, just to the side of where Kate’s car rested in mechanical slumber, (even amidst the lunacy I was witnessing out there, the sight of the ‘Jesus Saves’ banner that emblazoned her rear window made my dick shrivel), a little Jack Russell was stupidly running in circles chasing after its own tail. In my stupor, I vaguely hoped the little fella never caught up with the damn thing. After all, its tail was lit up like a fucking sparkler and he’d be in for a mouthful of red-hot awful should he succeed in getting his fangs into it. I saw what was left of a cat sizzling atop our picnic table, and yet another one, alive and well and not in the least bit char-grilled, sat close to its cooking kitty buddy, licking its balls like it hadn’t a care in the world.
“Yeah, um, Kate?” I muttered. “I think…I think someone’s setting dogs on fire out there. And a cat. Just the one cat, though - fuck you think about that shit?”
It was all I could muster by way of describing the scene to my still near catatonic wife. Her response, much like our sex life, was dead on arrival.
I turned my back on my lovely wife, who remained wrapped under the duvet and under the spell of her constantly corroding mind, and surveyed the scene once more, though my attention never held long enough to learn the fate of that little pooch.
The night was suddenly filled with a new sound…
I’m not the man to describe how it sounded, but I imagine if the hell that my darling wife was so convinced I’d be attending had a soundtrack, it would sound a whole fuck of a lot like this. It was nothing less than a symphony of agony…a concerto of pain. Prolonged wailing and screeching of the sort that hit you in some primal place you’d never known or cared to know existed inside of you.
It was the sound of death and dying. A tidal wave of hurt, that seemed to be pushing in the walls of our unhappy home, to revoke our safety forever.
And it was human.
There was no mistaking it - people were dying out there, on our very own streets and from the sounds of it, in every damn street in San Quentin. And these were no tame and tepid horror movie screams spat forth from the lungs of Hollywood dollies. No…these were soul-freezing testaments to untold tortures being endured.
Finally, my wife sat up. I don’t know how long I stood there by that rear window, frozen in shock and horror at what I was hearing, but it felt like both a million years and a single moment. Time took a back seat to gut-level terror, and in the spaces when the wailing died down to near silence, it was all the more horrifying.
In those silences, I could hear the humanity behind the hurt.
Somewhere out there a man was screaming a females name in a voice that had long since passed hysteria and hurtled into the land of the mad. His daughter? His wife? Who the hell knows. There were countless maniacal treaties for mercy sent forth to the almighty, and the almighty was clearly off-hours.
At one point, I even heard laughter. Somehow that was more chilling than the screams.
Worst by far was the sound of the children.
I’ve always had an issue with crying babies. Something paternal in me comes to the surface when I hear an infant cry out. It never fails to break my heart, and it sure didn’t fail to break it on this dark, terrible night. Bad enough that I could discern at least four screaming infants nearby, but the images my mind was forcing upon me were taking me from the brink of terror to outright blind panic.
Where were the parents? What the fuck was going on?
I turned to Kate only to find that she had frozen in place. There was no expression on my wife’s face - none. I’d figured that perhaps her usual pious demeanour would be well and truly extinguished, giving way to perhaps a more humane side of her than had been known to occasionally surface in recent years, but she may as well have been made of stone. Or porcelain. Her eyes were a double zero; here lips were drawn tight and she was unmoving. Shock…it had to be shock.
I was just about to reach for my wife when the smell hit me. And fresh waves of terror coursed through my veins. The once relaxing scent of lavender and thyme that filled our sleeping quarters was mingling with an alien smell; creating an odour so pungent it made my stomach roil. I recognised that intrusive smell though. Hell if I didn’t! Normally, it would have been a smell that would put a smile on any red-blooded American man’s face, but in this moment, it promised of horrors unimaginable.
It was the unmistakable, sickeningly familiar smell of cooking meat.
My mind tried its hardest to take in the scale of what was going on out there, but a sort of dull idiocy was beginning to take hold of me. I don’t know if it was shock or what.
I made my way from the window where I stood to the adjacent window – one that looked out onto our front garden and the street beyond.
Once again, near shitting myself, I pulled aside the curtains.
The scale, it transpired, was pretty fucking huge.
Whatever was going on out there was not restricted to the doggy kingdom. Not by a long shot…
Many of the houses were ablaze from top to bottom, rooftops were collapsing in on themselves, and there were people in many of the windows, screaming in either panic or pain and the flames tore through their properties and eventually through their flesh. Lawns were ablaze, garden sheds burned and the majority of the trees that lined our humble corner of the world were little more than towering bl
ackened infernos.
My mind reeled.
What I was seeing out there looked like nothing short of Armageddon, but Bruce Willis had obviously left his phone of the hook. Maybe he was drinking with the Almighty, because that fucker still hadn’t shown face either.
I saw death and destruction everywhere my eyes landed, man - it was hell.
I saw a kid’s tree-house that had become a bonfire, with the poor kid still in it. I’d watched that little guy whoop and holler with joy when his dad had built the thing for him, now I could see his blackened, charred hand grasping at thin air from the tiny window his father had so lovingly crafted. I thought my heart would shut down as I watched that one small, crackling arm drop for the last time as the boy was eaten by immolation.
The only respite was the ending of the screams. Those screams were almost as bad as those of the infants I’d heard earlier.
Speaking of infants, directly across from my once happy home, I saw a sight that will stay with me till the day I die, (which may not be very long... all things withstanding).
The house across the way was the home of the Dawson’s. - a family respected and loved by most of our community, Christian and non-Christian alike. Mr Dawson was a stand-up guy, and never passed the chance to smile your way or to offer his help in any way should he see you struggling with your car or cutting wood. Mrs Dawson was, forgive me here, a cougar to end all cougars. A damn fine specimen of womanhood have I ever seen one. They’d just recently celebrated the birth of their first born child - an absolutely beautiful baby girl called ‘Patricia’, and they’d never seemed so happy as when she came into their lives. Mr Dawson walked taller and prouder, and seemed to have aged in reverse since Patty joined the gang, and his wife had lost none of her luminance post-labour. In fact, she looked even more radiant.
Right now though, there was no sign of Mr Dawson with his open grin and kind blue eyes. Right now, directly across the street, and mirroring my own second floor bedroom; staring straight into my eyes with silent pleading and unhinged despair, was his wife.
And little Patty - innocent and unaware in her arms.
The window was obviously locked as she struggled desperately to open it, and there were flames inching ever closer to them from the entrance to their room.
There was no exit and less time.
As I watched, numb with misery, I saw Mrs Dawson mouth something - more like scream it actually -behind the glass that encaged her and her child, I couldn’t hear a word but I got the idea.
Mrs Dawson raised that beautiful little six month old bouncing baby over her head, and threw her straight at the window.
I looked away just in time to avoid seeing little Patty’s end, but I heard the glass smash.
I heard her confused and helpless cries and the sudden silence.
I heard the wet impact as her tiny precious body hit the driveway.
It was then that I blacked out…
***
When I finally came to, I was met with a number of things - none even remotely welcome.
I still lay where I’d fallen, and a pool of dried blood had matted my hair to the bedroom rug. Slowly lifting my head, I gazed around the room, hovering in some nether-dimension between shock and concussion. The floor, seeming miles below me in my dizzying, vertiginous state, was in a pretty bad way, and on any other morning I’d already be worrying about Kate’s reaction, (or overreaction), to such a calamity, but today of course was different.
A tell-tale blood-splash on the sill of the window where I’d been standing when I’d held party to the disgusting display outside quickly explained the agonised throbbing in my head and the mess on the carpet, but why had I fallen?
I stood there for god only knows how long before the screaming pain in my head slowly began to recede. My vision returned to full clarity, and along with it, God help me, came my memory.
That poor woman. Oh Jesus…the baby.
I frantically reached for the curtains, and with my heart threatening to burst from my chest, I opened them once more. Please let it be concussion. Please don’t let it be real…
The street was quiet. But the sight of that poor broken infant betrayed the truth.
I quickly turned away from the scene below and took in the morning’s tale. It was clear from the smouldering, smoking wasteland out there that what had transpired was over, at least for now, but the devastation was everywhere. Small pockets of fire still burned throughout the district, and a number of huge blazes lit up the grey morning far off to the north. A could still hear the distant cries of the dying and but there was a chilling absence of the sort of sounds that such a massive tragedy would surely come hand in hand with.
Where are all the fucking helicopters? Where’s FEMA, for Christ sakes!?
I scanned the skies, and they were free of all insects mechanical or otherwise, save a few birds that were no doubt scavenging for meats and treats I didn’t want to think about. There was no longer a wall of sirens tearing up the city. Only a deathly graveyard emptiness that somehow seemed louder and more deafening that a whole goddam platoon of choppers ever could.
It was as though whatever had swept through the city with such ferocity had vanished just as quickly, with an equal measure of finality.
The world felt dead.
I was broken from my reverie by the sound of our television downstairs, and in that moment I realised Kate was no longer in bed. Thanks for the fucking help, Kate, I thought, as I dragged my wretched self to the bedroom door, opened it, and made for the staircase.
When I arrived in the kitchen, I found my dear sweet wife sat before our 32 inch widescreen, munching on a slice of half-burnt toast, and grinning.
Yeah...Grinning.
She looked like she’d just won the fucking lottery. Like all those ecstasy pills from her past has re-hit her all at the one time in concentrated moment of sheer, blissful abandon.
Like the fucking city hadn’t just burned down before our very eyes.
Like right outside our front door there wasn’t the fresh corpse of a little baby splashed across the tarmac.
She looked elated. Elevated. Enraptured….
And that’s when the droning voice emanating from the TV started to take hold of my attention.
I wish it hadn’t.
She was watching a news channel. I’m not sure which, as I never watch that bullshit, and on any other morning I never would.
Today would be an exception.
I felt justified in that.
Onscreen was a live report, coming in from New Jersey. A handsome, well-groomed black man who was visibly battling to maintain his composure and convey false authority against some internal protest of his obvious fear, stood before a massive building, perhaps a bank or a library. Who the fuck knows? What matters is that the thing was torched.
“At around 5am, Eastern Time, the United States and the world met with devastating tragedy - an as yet unexplained phenomena occurred throughout each and every state in the US, and appears to have simultaneously affected the entire world, decimating entire populations in its wake.…human, animal and aviary alike. Whatever this advent is, it’s causing amass numbers of individuals to - and this is backed up by hard factual and incidental evidence - spontaneously combust”.
I stared, slack-jawed at the fucker as my mind turned in on itself.
“Did he just mention Spontaneous combustion?”
I looked at Kate.
Kate looked into space.
The news-reporter went on. “What was first thought to be an act of terrorism was quickly determined to be a far more widespread and mystifying situation that any known terrorist cell or organization has the means or the know-how to perpetrate. The majority of the populace of the planet has been erupting into flame, either fully or partially. So far no logical cause for the phenomena has been determined. What’s left of the US government has mobilised the remaining military and is in currently in talks with surviving governmental pockets from around th
e globe. The causation, at present, is baffling the scientific community worldwide.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me! Spontaneous combustion!?” I declared once more, to no one in particular.
“In what’s being described by scientists and scholars as a ‘freak ecological mutation’ all sentient life on the planet, outside of the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers, has been affected by some sort of unidentifiable imbalance in the ecosystem.”
“An imbalance that leads to human bonfires, right?” I asked my sweat-drenched TV buddy.
“The fires have quickly grown widespread and have destroyed much of the world’s known forestry and the cities and suburban areas are little better off -”
“No shit, Sherlock” I retorted.
“There is little more to report at present to the survivors of the US. FEMA is currently doing all they can, as are the emergency services throughout each state. Though we strongly advise all surviving civilians to remain in their homes. Remain vigilant, and pray. This has been Samuel Kendrick, for Channel 5 News.”
And with that, the fucker was gone…
As if to heighten the sheer horror of what had just been reported, the reporters shaking, startled visage was replaced with an even less cheery sight -that of a montage of scenes from around the planet.
Yep, the world was fucked…
First up came footage of a passenger jet burning on the lawn outside the White House.
Next up, we were treated to a vast forest fire that had engulfed much of the northern territories in Scotland.
A shot from a helicopter showed Paris burn - the people of the famous city of lights, what was left of them, had taken to the streets, and were looting with wild abandon. The lights had very definitely gone out. The ones powered by electricity, anyway. The city was lit up like a bonfire.
The next image was that of a zoo, I have no idea where. In an image so surreal as to almost elicit a giggle from my rapidly mentally declining self, a lion was smashing its cooking head into a Plexiglas window, while outside its confines, a man held tightly to what I think was a teenage boy. I assume it was his son, because even as the flames tore through the boy’s body and engulfed the man, he held on to the kid regardless.
Consumed - Volume 1: An Extreme Horror Anthology. Page 8
