HARVEST OF RUIN
A Spring of Sorrow
Arthur Mongelli
Copyright 2018 by Arthur Mongelli
Special thanks to you, the reader, and to the team at Severed Press for giving a new author a chance and for seeing this tale through its completion. All my love to F and B.
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.
-John Dryden
A SPRING OF SORROW
Will awoke and rolled out of the bed, piled high with blankets and comforters. He was careful not to wake Jen who was still sleeping. He limped painfully across the room to the windows that overlooked the pastures behind his childhood home. This had become a morning ritual for him over the long Wisconsin winter. Every morning he peered out through the windows for signs of life and signs of death. They had arrived in Benoit in early December, as far as they were able to discern, having lost touch with the days and weeks months before. When the lights finally went out for good and their rechargeable devices finally died, their keeping of time shifted from hours and minutes to light and dark. Since their arrival they had kept busy fixing, fortifying, and extending the existing stockade fence to encompass the house and most of its acreage, over ten acres in all. Under Will's tutelage, they started their seeds in mid-February and were planning to grow food come spring.
With nowhere else to go, the group had hedged their bets on Will's hopes that his rural hometown would be left unscathed by the undead. The rural character of Benoit, being more than an hour from anything resembling a city, as well as being home to people where every house had at least one firearm, and almost everyone hunted, led him to believe would be clear. They had all latched on to his hope, it was their only beacon in the sea of death they moved through. They were all crushed to find that Benoit did not hold their salvation.
They had made the journey across New York State and the Great Lakes on Will's hopes and belief that his rural community would make it through. They were all heartbroken for him once they finally arrived. His family was nowhere to be found, though the scene of violence in his younger brother's room told of a devastating yet mysterious tale of the fate of the rest of the Norman family. Will continued to be haunted by the ghosts of his childhood over the long winter. The house once so full of love and family, now looked and smelled more like a refugee camp.
They had toiled nearly endlessly to build a sanctuary out of the farmhouse, despite the initial dashed hopes at the completion of their journey, now that they were safely within the walls of their own construction and despite the terror and death that lurked about the countryside.
Will sighed away the heaviness the thoughts felt on his heart and scanned the perimeter of fencing, mainly looking for movement. In all, the fence was an ugly ramshackle mess, but it did what it was meant to do. It kept what few undead that made their way to the isolated farm away from the house and off the property. The ground was long frozen by the time they arrived, leaving them no way to sink new fence posts without creating an unacceptable amount of noise. The areas of the property that had new fencing installed used a random assortment of anchors to hold it in place. Along the front of the house was a ramshackle assortment of farm vehicles and trailers they had been able to move from the surrounding area. They flattened the tires so nothing could slither underneath once the vehicles were rolled into position. Any undead that approached over the long nights were held at bay by the fence until morning came and they could dispose of them safely.
From their best estimation, it was approaching the end of April and mud season was in full swing. On a handful of occasions since the snows melted they had to venture to the fence line in order to dispatch random undead that shambled up. On those occasions, the sucking mud threatened to pull boots from feet and made for an exhausting walk. As terrible as the mud was for them to plod through, it nearly immobilized the slow dead. Across the pastures could be seen some intermittent streaks of persistent snow, but mostly the dun hue of dead foliage mingled with earthen tons of mud. On the horizon the drab tones met with varied shades of gray, the only colors that the sky seemed to know in Wisconsin during this time of year.
Will used a cane frequently, mainly for the reassurance it provided him. Over the long winter his leg had grown strong enough to walk on again, and damn near good enough to run, especially with the reassuring comfort of the knee brace they had scavenged from the local pharmacy. Thinking of his increased mobility, his thoughts quickly shifted to once again traveling out among the dead. He knew that he wouldn't be able to outpace the fast undead, but even in perfect health, that was a near impossibility. He figured that's what all their guns were for. Either way he wanted to start going on the scavenging trips with Jen and Tim.
Jen stirred in the bed behind him and cracked an eye open, looking at Will as he watched out the windows. He turned and the two locked eyes for a moment. Happiness mingled with love. Jen smiled contentedly and closed her eyes, pressing her face into the pillow to ward off the new day. Will turned away from the woman he loved, whose life he had saved months before on the roadways of New Jersey. She had returned the favor numerous times as their journey moved from north Jersey, across the breadth of New York State, the Great Lakes through to Wisconsin. The journey had been excruciatingly difficult, they had all lost something on the icy wastes. They had all lost a friend in Bjorn and a little brother in Nick.
As he turned back to his chore of peering out the windows, Will could see that there were no undead lurking about within sight. He hurriedly proceeded to get dressed for the day. With his pants and socks on, he walked to the mirror and looked at the man he had become in just a few short months. A mottled, grizzly beard grew down his cheeks and under his chin, not yet mature enough to meet up with a mustache. His green eyes were sunken a bit, he assumed from the poor winter nourishment, lacking in greens. His shaggy mop of black hair had to be tied back to keep out of his eyes. His appearance was quite a difference from the clean looking quasi-hipster he had been a few months before, living in New York City when the world fell apart. He quickly tied his hair back and ran a brush through his beard and headed out of the bedroom; the cold of the bare wood floors felt as if it were burning the soles of his feet, and lent a sense of urgency to evacuating his bladder.
They last encountered working electricity the day before they set foot on the lakes and once they arrived, they had to make some fast accommodations in order to stay comfortable. He grabbed his toothbrush from the bathroom in the hall and squeezed a nub of paste onto it. The need to urinate was imminent and spurred him to running down the hall and down the stairs, through to the back of the house. Finally, he paused at the sliding glass doors at the rear of the dining room. He pressed his knees together and pushed his palm into his bladder while he peered intently out of the doors for any sign of the undead. This was the house rule, regardless of circumstances, they agreed and were required to watch for two full minutes before opening a door, even onto the relatively safe back deck. It was a test of patience and willpower most mornings, but they all understood that violating it had the potential to put everyone at risk. Once he double and triple checked, he slid the door open and stepped out into the frigid morning air.
They had created a number of rules for living together in safety among the undead after their arrival, some were based in common sense, others were necessitated by experience. All doors needed to be locked at all times. The only exception were the sliding glass doors, as the back deck they led to had
the stairs removed and had been fortified. The slow undead could be foiled by a locked door, even against a great number of them, and the racket they would make trying to break through would give anyone inside ample time to arm and prepare or escape out another exit. The fast ones, though, would break through doors and windows alike in search of prey. Thankfully, they were fewer in number than the slow, and they rarely ever saw them out in the open country. For the fast ones, they remained vigilant during the day and did their best to remain quiet at night in the hopes that they would go unnoticed. Avoiding them altogether was the safest.
Another rule they obeyed was the 'Buddy System'. Anytime someone went outside the relative safety of the house they were supposed to find a partner so that one could keep watch while the other went about whatever task necessitated the trip. Their first priority after arriving and clearing the house was to board up all of the downstairs windows. This added some security as well as allowing them to keep a fire burning in the hearth and lanterns on in the evenings and the dim hours of early morning. They still weren't entirely certain how the undead sensed them, so keeping quiet was the rule come nightfall. This wasn't normally a problem, as the conversations after nightfall were often hushed conversations about the undead. Night was when the children were sleeping, and was the only time for the adults to talk about the harsher realities of the situation. The conversations always revolved around the undead: if they would eventually rot to pieces, what motivation drove them onward, why they didn't freeze in the harsh northern weather. But mostly, they spoke of what could have caused the disease and why the undead existed at all.
Will rushed across the breadth of the deck and brushed his teeth while urinating off the side. He wasn't alarmed when he heard soft footsteps coming out behind him. He turned and saw Jen rushing out, holding her bladder as she made for the impromptu outhouse. They had constructed the shed out of a handful of spare doors they found in the barn and capped it with an old domed skylight. With the stairs removed, to protect against the undead in case they breached the fence, they were at least able to toilet in peace, if not warmth. They used melted snow for all their water needs throughout the winter, but now that mud season was in full swing, they had switched over to rainwater collection. The lack of running water was a hardship they had grudgingly adapted to. They bathed rarely, and always in pairs or more if possible. The work involved in having to warm buckets of snow or water by the wood-burning stove kept the aroma of each other strong in the house, despite the ample supply of deodorant.
A system of tarps suspended between the house, garage and barn all tilted into a plastic 55-gallon barrel that they treated with purification tablets before drinking. The wood burning stove did a good job of keeping the sitting room warm, although those occupying the bedrooms upstairs did so under heaped piles of blankets. The early winter conversations had mostly been about staying here long-term, and they had started making all the preparations that they could in order to sow crops come springtime. Those conversations were over now.
*
It was just after the first thaw when it happened. Afterwards, the mood in the house completely changed. A warm rainstorm had washed away the last snows of winter, leaving nothing but mud and murky ice-crusted puddles behind. Christine was on the back deck, bent over the filthy bucket they used as a toilet. She was clutching her stomach as it rejected the meager breakfast of oats and water she had eaten. Her now obviously pregnant stomach was empty and had just started settling, its bubbling eased to a mild complaint when her mind registered the distant racket coming across the open land. The noise was unmistakable. It was the heavy whooping sound of large propellers pushing a cushion of air beneath them. Helicopters, and a great many of them.
“Will! Jen! Everyone!” She screamed, pushing herself clear of the ramshackle outhouse and through the open sliding glass door at the rear of the house. “Get out here, now!”
As she stuck her head inside, she could see the lot of them converging on the dining room that led out onto the deck from the far corners of the house. All of them were wide eyed with surprise and excitement. The entire group, all seven of them including the children, piled out onto the rear deck and began yelling and waving their arms wildly in the air. Hope mixed in equal parts with despair as they watched the fleet of ten black military-style helicopters soar past, moving at great speed.
As the whooping of the convoy faded into the distance, the arms that had been waving so furiously drooped back down, leaving the group standing in sullen silence. They hadn't seen another living soul in nearly four months, not since they first took to the frozen lakes at the onset of winter. The sight of the helicopters rekindled the spark of hope that had long faded into the shadowy recesses of their minds. That hope, the one that they might be rescued from the devastated landscape, was a fantasy shared by them all in private. They all recognized at this point, having traveled halfway across the country, that such thoughts might well be pure fantasy and pushed them well out of the realm of conscious thought. Their focus and conversations revolved around the immediacy of their needs and the dangers around them.
The despair they felt as the specks of the aircraft faded into the distance was the abject loneliness of their existence once again setting in. The only world they knew at this point, the one they struggled daily to survive in, was the one that was ruled by the undead. The notion that there might still yet be a place that was ruled by the living tore at their sense of reality. They all struggled with the knowledge that any such world would be far in the distance, across a vast landscape crawling with the undead. The recognition of the realities was a heavy, wet blanket dropped on the fires of hope that were kindled by the helicopters.
“Were those military?” Jen quietly asked as she stared off to the west.
“I think so!” Tim replied, his exuberance not yet stifled by the harsh realities they lived in.
He had no military experience, but they sure looked like they were bristling with guns.
“Where are they going?” Christine asked quietly, in awe.
“Where are they coming from?” Jen asked simultaneously.
Gradually the group dispersed, with each moving to their daily chores and rituals that cabin fever and the long winter demanded. They were sullen and quiet as the day moved on, each lost pondering their own feelings. After a long morning spent mulling it over in his head, Tim made up his mind that the conversation needed to be had. He walked into the dining room where everyone had gathered for a lunch of rice and beans.
“I want to talk about going after them,” he said, standing over the table.
Silence greeted him as he looked around at their faces, searching for a response. He was prepared for an argument, some yelling, maybe crying. What he didn't expect was to see the blood drain from their faces. The faces of fear that were omnipresent on their journey to Benoit reappeared on Jen, Will and Laura's faces. They had stopped chewing and stared blankly at him. It had taken months of safety and solitude for that sense of constant terror to lift, and now with a handful of words, it was back. Christine, still mourning the loss of her boyfriend, Nick, stood and walked out of the room. Once she was gone, Jen finally spoke.
“I want to know where they went as well, Tim, but you can't ask a six or seven month pregnant girl to go back out there. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Who's going to deliver the baby, Jen? You? Do you even realize how dangerous childbirth is? She could die.” Tim whispered the last part, looking cautiously around the corner to ensure the young girl was out of earshot. “She has at least a month or two before the pregnancy really affects her mobility. Besides, they were headed west. We are mostly clear of the big cities, if we go it will be a lot of open country and farmland.”
“Did you forget what happened when we left the house in Hancock?” Will asked.
He was referring to a safe, isolated house they had found with the help of Nick and Chris. They had stayed long enough that Tim was able to partially recuperate
from getting shot. Against better judgment, they had left the quiet, snow-bound house, to continue their journey toward Wisconsin. What that journey brought was a series of hardships and difficulties, culminating in the deaths of Nick and Bjorn on the wasteland of the frozen lakes.
“I get that,” Tim croaked out around the lump in his throat that thoughts of Bjorn, his long time friend conjured. “And I know it won't be easy, but what are we doing here, struggling daily just to survive. If there is a chance at the safety and security that the military or whoever that was could offer, can we ignore it?”
“What if it's not the military?” Laura asked, drawing a hard look from her husband.
Tim had to cede the point, though he doubted that any other group in the world at this point could pull together ten capable pilots to fly ten identical military-style helicopters. The argument ended there for the moment but the seeds of doubt had begun to take root in all of them.
It was the sight of those helicopters that afternoon that signaled an end to the sanctuary the house provided them. Between the cabin fever they all were suffering and their array of thoughts and fears about the helicopters, there were many arguments over the remainder of the winter.
*
“Before we go any further together, I'd like you two to tell me everything that happened that led you to the point we are at, here now,” Grayson asked. “I don't travel with people that I don't trust, and I don't trust anyone I don't know.”
By the steely tone and look in his eyes, Mark knew that this was not an idle request. He and Amber shared a nervous glance, suddenly realizing they had let two armed men in the backseat of the Tesla. Amber was barely able to hold her composure and Mark knew that he was going to have to be the one to relay their tale.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 3): A Spring of Sorrow Page 1
