An Unkindness of Ravens

by JT Pearson

  *

  CLICK-CLUNK – more pictures of dead bodies.

  The men watched the pictures one after another, horribly mangled and burned bodies, young and old, charred skeletons frozen in their steps or crumpled to the ground – biblical looking shit – like what was left of the people of Sodom and Gomorra after God had fire bombed them. Some sick asshole in the back of the room started snickering when a slide illuminated the wall with a fried out car full of smoldering corpses. The instructor set the remote for the camera down. He sighed, sick and tired of the depraved men that he had been dealing with for months. After a short pause he continued.

  “We don’t talk about the condition of the energy grid openly because the last thing we need right now from the public is a panic. What we need to do is to work at controlling the problem. It’s become a national dilemma and with the help of some of you boys we’re hoping we can contain this problem until we have a better solution. Some of you are here on a release program from our penitentiaries. Others are just here to make some real good paychecks. Try not to burn out or burn up before you burn rubber and leave us behind,” he said, and laughed. The room of men just stared back at him. The smile drained from his face. “Back to the presentation.” He picked the remote off the table and the pictures started moving again.

  “This is what remained of an elementary school in Illinois.”

  CLICK-CLUNK.

  “A hospital in Maine.”

  CLICK-CLUNK.

  “A shopping mall in Houston.”

  The lunatic in the back of the room started snickering again and two guys yanked him from his seat and slammed him up against the wall. They tussled with him, dragging him in circles, punching and kicking him, trying to get him to the floor, all the while he laughed. A guard in the back of the room stepped forward but then relaxed and decided to let the men that were beating him have their way for a while. The three of them passed in front of the projector, blows exchanging in the flickering light, looking like a grainy old film of boxers from an ancient time, Ali, Frazier, Foreman. Rumors had circulated that big energy had even gotten permission to explore mental institutions to fill out their work rosters. The maniac trading blows with whoever he could reach gave the rumors instant validity. The men that had grabbed the joker tossed him out of the room on to the floor in the hall, his clothes torn, his face bloodied. The others in the class room heard him growing distant, still laughing, as he crawled down the hallway. Another guard that had been posted outside the room moved past the small window on the classroom door as he rushed after the man to collect him. The man’s wild behavior was just a symptom of an entire world gone mad.

  Jeff, his face now shaven, three quarters of his hair chopped away, sat in the middle of the classroom, looking freshly common. It felt strange to him being around anyone now, let alone an entire room full of people. He tried not to stare at the other men. He recognized some of the others from prison or past construction jobs before he’d been incarcerated. He also knew many of them well enough to know that they too were society’s bottom scrapers, either forced to take this job as Jeff was or they were loners without much to live for, nobody to talk them out of taking this work – nobody that cared. The men that worked the grid were like the canaries companies used to release into coal mines in the old days in order to see if the air in the shafts was poisonous. Or maybe the men in the classroom were more like the first monkeys that were shot into space instead of risking men. Those first five monkeys sent into space were all named Albert. They all died. The men in that class room were sacrificial lambs, canaries, space monkeys. They were a room full of Alberts.

  “Rooster, is that you?”

  The voice behind Jeff came from an acquaintance that he vaguely remembered. It made Jeff uncomfortable even hearing his name coming from someone that had known him before, back when his friends knew him as Rooster. He racked his mush to remember the name that matched the voice, thinking that it was probably Steve. Jeff drank a lot of beer when he was on the outside. He tended to remember everybody’s name as Steve.

  The instructor trained his attention on Jeff.

  “Hey, boy, you about done talkin? You got somethin so important that we all gotta hear it?”

  Jeff remained quiet and waited for the moment to pass.

  “Well? You deaf? You goona just sit there?”

  After the instructor waited for nearly a minute, Jeff realized that he wasn’t going to move on until he said something. “That was the plan but it doesn’t work very well if you keep asking me questions.”

  This brought some light snickering from the back of the room.

  “Keep that shit up. You’ll find yourself wrapped in flames and everybody else’ll be roastin marshmallows off you.”

  Jeff nodded.

  CLICK-CLUNK – DEAD BODIES - CLICK-CLUNK – DEAD BODIES – CLICK-CLUNK – DEAD BODIES.

  “There is four times as many miles of energy grid under the surface of the United States as there are miles of highway on top of it and much of that existing line is nearing its fiftieth birthday, and as you can see, that line under there ain’t aging nearly as well as me.”

  The instructor waited for a laugh but again his attempt at humor fell on deaf ears.

  “This is real dangerous shit, fellas. Let me tell you about these types of explosions for a moment. Underdeveloped countries with low level technology used to deploy this type of explosion during wars as a weapon. Oxygen is the only catalyst needed for the desired violent reaction. Men used to fly over an area with a mixture of chemicals that was very similar to our CLX5912, and drop a container into the air over a city. Then they’d fire a missile at the container when it was a thousand feet above the ground and let all hell break loose.”

  The instructor studied the men for a reaction but got little from it.

  “We really need your help, gentlemen. And if you’ll help us we’re going to help you.”

  The company loaded up all of their Alberts, along with a couple of armed guards to prevent runaways, and the carnival was out on the road, stopping to dig up areas that computers had identified as vulnerable or areas that already had enough ruptures and explosions to warrant serious attention. The men dug them up, wrapped the lines in high tech plastic bandages, and buried them again. Then the carnival packed up the Alberts, a couple of program directors, and the guards, and headed farther down the road. Wham, bam, thank you Uncle Sam for your contribution and on to the next project. It was as basic and as simple as baking an apple pie, if that pie could potentially explode and vaporize the entire kitchen.

  After bouncing around with odd crews Jeff was eventually assigned to a permanent position working for a man named Grey. The other men that made up the crew were a mixed bag of dangerous or incompetent men, sometimes both.

  Tyler Maxwell, eighteen years old, straight out of high school, still had the marks from the diaper pins on his ass. Met the crew wearing sandals and sweatpants. The worst part, not only had he no experience with dangerous machinery. He’d never even had a job. Jeff feared for the boy’s life around this type of machinery, and among these kinds of men.

  Joe Walcott, also known as the Mountain Ridge Mangler. Another product of the prison release program. Responsible for the deaths of seventeen people they’d found buried under the cabin where he had resided. He was a mountain himself, six foot ten and nearly five hundred pounds. After Jeff had gotten over his initial fear of the man he found out that he was surprisingly well read.

  Sly Ed Brady, machine operator, considerably past what was the mandatory retirement age. He was just there for the money. If his mouth was moving he was lying.

  Demetrius Jacobs was a former professional combat fighter. He had killed thirteen men in the ring before it was discovered that he had had some illegal work done to his body, his hands and feet surgically altered, reinforced and weighted to make them deadly when he delivered blows. For his transgression he was stripped of his title and tossed into prison. And now he was out and h
e was here with Jeff’s crew. His deal was for three years.

  Charley Redbird, AKA, Chief of the Dead, a radical activist that had attempted blowing up a city, explaining in an interview from behind bars for Time Magazine that he had been claiming the land under the city back for nature. He wasn’t as big as Walcott but he was big, a beast of a man at six foot five and easily over three hundred pounds. He had a ten year deal. The Governor of his state knew that there was no way that a man could survive ten years working on the grid. Giving him a deal just meant that the chief would reach his death faster than if he hung on waiting on death row.

  Roger Dogley, ‘The Dog’, showed up his first day wearing a silk shirt, polyester pants, and dress shoes. He was rumored by the other men to have been in and out the revolving doors of mental health facilities for years, all of them refusing to hold him. He was freakishly strong and an incredible workhorse – the kind of super human strength that seems to be reserved only for the insane. His blue eyes, bright with unbridled energy, were a dead giveaway that the elevator didn’t reach the penthouse. Roger never stayed at the motels at night. Jeff heard him sneak out and slide past the guards, somehow undetected. Wherever the crew was stationed, nearby nursing homes reported missing women. Somehow Jeff just knew that those disappearances had something to do with Roger. Local authorities made a weak effort whenever questioning the men that ran our program. Very little was done investigating the crimes. The victims were old and nobody seemed to care about the old anymore. The other members of the crew were surprised every morning when Roger turned up in his bed before the guards entered.

  ‘Hollywood’ James Harris, freshly released from a Wisconsin prison. After being arrested for a particularly wild night in Milwaukee during which he attacked a man in a bar and ate both of his ears, and then left the bar and went after a crowd in a dance club with an ancient samurai sword that he had stolen from a museum, he was sentenced in a courtroom to only ten years. When the judge was finishing up, he asked Harris why he had swallowed the ears after he had bitten them off. Hollywood replied, “I wanted to make damn sure that man never wore sunglasses inside a bar at night again.” Upon hearing his answer, the judge added another ten years to his sentence. That story pretty much summed Hollywood up.

  There was also a small clique of dark haired, dark skinned men who were difficult to establish in age or ancestry that worked closely together, whispering quietly now and then among themselves, as if everything was some sort of secret. They all dressed the same. Wore their dark hair the same. Always had their eyes covered with dark protection lenses, which for obvious reasons drove Hollywood to the edge of attacking them. The small clique looked so similar that they could’ve easily been brothers. Whenever Jeff approached them they remained silent and studied him. He found them unnerving, but they were bodies that willingly followed orders and that’s all that was needed.

  Jeff’s crew got called back to Michigan again. They hadn’t been there in three years. Not since the area had gotten much worse. Nobody had.

  The day the Alberts arrived they were told by the program directors to stop in town at a local restaurant to take a couple of hours to unwind and have dinner on the company’s dime. The other guys didn’t think it over much, just grateful to plant their asses in a warm booth and stuff free food in their guts, but Jeff couldn’t help but wonder if guilt hadn’t influenced the suits to buy the Albert’s their last meal.

  After they’d finished eating they went out to the repair site. The vehicles owned by the program directors and inspectors that were already on the premises were parked in the familiar V formation, aimed at the closest exit road. The V formation is used in order to keep any of the trucks from being blocked in while a line is getting ready to rupture. The whole idea that someone would park a truck with the intention of a quick getaway if things went bad was a joke. Did the suits that came out and looked at a sight really believe that they could outrun one of these explosions with their trucks, Jeff asked himself. They couldn’t have been that stupid. No one near the work that went bad ever survived a rupture. Maybe the program directors thought that the men that they employed would be stupid enough to believe that they might possibly survive a rupture if it seemed like the men running things believed it. If it kept a few of the dirt monkeys from trying to escape and go AWOL maybe it was worth the effort.

  A representative for the company that had a striking resemblance to Jed Clampett from the old sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies greeted the men about two hundred yards from their destination. He was already nervous and sweating. There was no way that he was getting any closer to the grid than that.

  “How you boys doin? Nice trip down?” He shook their hands with the sincerity of a man that was intending to keep them. “Pretty ugly condition the line’s in up there. Not gonna lie about it, but that’s why we brought in the A team.”

  To all of these company boys the men that they had working for them were five year olds.

  “When the line’s this bad why can’t the company just shut this part of the grid down for a little while like the Union Reps have been asking? Just shutting down a small section wouldn’t take that much energy away from keeping the Womb active, would it?” Demetrius asked him.

  “I thought most of you boys were aware of the pickle we’re in but I’ll give ya the skinny one more time. Son, our protection shield requires more energy than you can fathom. We can’t risk creating a weakness that an enemy could breach. We’re at war right now, son. You do understand that? And even when the alert level drops again we aren’t going to shut any lines down. Life is about making things happen. Getting things done. Making that money. Hell, we’re making record profits right now, and we’ve got boys that are far smarter than any of us working on a solution to the CLX5912 problem while we speak. And if we started shutting down lines and hoping that it didn’t affect the Womb, it wouldn’t be just this one site. It’d be dozens and dozens that workers started asking to shut down while they repaired it. Hell, we’d never get a chance to move any product – never make any money. No. You’re right in saying that we’re taking a bit of a gamble. We’re trying to shut the line down as little as possible while we keep it operational.”

  Grey kept his head down and his mouth shut like he always did when he dealt with his superiors.

  “You mean we’re taking a bit of a gamble,” Jeff corrected him. “You’re going to be down the road in some diner eatin a piece of cherry pie, listening for a big boom in case you need to call for another crew to come out, while we’re looking the grid right in the eye.”

  The man’s face lit red, veins bulging from neck to forehead, looking like he was on the edge of a true Texas gusher of an aneurism.

  “You think that I don’t know who you are? Huh, Rooster? You little bullshit son of a bitch! You want to stop and talk about this? I know you! I know all about you! With your background you’re lucky to be walking around decent folks, let alone working anywhere! You’re a nutjob! A violent one! Killed a cop, if my memory serves me. You want to put it all out on the table, jailbird? Fine! Here it is. Paying for a couple hundred caskets and sending a couple truckloads of roses to your cryin mamas is a hell of a lot cheaper than stopping the production of CLX5912. Nobody forced you out here, did they? You could’ve sat back in your little cell but you didn’t. What was it ol’ Nancy Reagan use to tell screw ups? Told ‘em to stay in school and keep their heads out of the drugs. Guess that advice still holds up today. Should’a done that.” He smiled right at them, teeth dripping tobacco, contempt in his eyes. “Now then, you boys get your asses to work on that grid.” He paused. “Oh, and have a real nice day.”

  Suddenly Jeff wished that he could drag the old bastard up to the line that was on the verge of rupturing and force him to suit up with the rest of them. The guards moved forward with their fingers on the triggers of their rifles right on cue as if they’d read his mind. The man turned around and looked back at the crew while he was leaving.

  “Well, you bette
r get on.”

  The crew started toward the grid.

  “Not all y’all. It’s just a buckle in trouble here. Won’t need more than two of ya to get in there. Just the two boys that are needed in the ditch. One to maintain the payload in the resonator and Mr. Smartmouth Rooster to operate the gun. The rest of ya stay back half a mile out of harm’s way. This one looks like it’s got pretty good potential to blow and we can’t have all of ya floatin around in the sky above Michigan. We got a lot more work to get to. Need to keep a few of you around for awhile.”

  The other men did as they were told. Jeff and Tyler went to work on the line. Tyler’s hands trembled the entire time that he operated the resonator. The two were quick and the job went without incident. Later that night, Jeff got drunk outside the motel with the rest of the crew, minus Tyler and the dark haired clique that hung together. The crew built a fire and sat around it while their guards stood out at the perimeter where the light from the flames licked at their boots. They didn’t dare to say something about the contraband.

  “That kid Tyler should’a sat out with us. He go into town to get himself a whore or somethin?” asked Hollywood. Nobody answered. “Remember them days, boys? When ya just did whatever the hell you wanted at the end of the day? Them days is coming back.”

  “He’s probably stuck up,” countered Demetrius. “A boy like that. Never been in trouble. Never locked up.”

  “Nope,” said Ed. “He run off. Today was all he could handle. Who could blame him? He don’t want to blow his ass up. He had options. He was just here for the money. I mean I’m just here for the money but that ain’t the way it is for most.” He pointed at Jeff. “Wouldn’t you forget about the money and just leave if you had the chance, Rooster?”

  Jeff shrugged, indifferently.

  “That kid was a weak little bitch,” mumbled Joe.

  “You sure he’s gone?” Hollywood asked.

  Ed nodded. “If I’m lyin I’m dyin.”

  “You guys remember hearing about that crew that blew up in Ohio last week?” asked Hollywood.

  Most of the guys nodded.

  “Well some guy trimming the hedges in his back yard found the gunner’s helmet in his bushes. It still had the guys head in it, completely intact. The explosion must’ve just ripped the head from his body and dropped it half a mile away. You suppose that could happen?”

  “Caught an updraft and carried on the wind maybe,” offered Joe.

  “Or maybe an animal picked it up and carried it there, a dog or a raccoon maybe.” Ed tossed his beer can into the fire and it crackled as it shrunk.

  “A raccoon’s too small to carry a human head,” argued Roger. “A human head’s pretty heavy.

  Joe nodded in agreement.

  “So, do you have Jesus, Rooster?” The chief was leaning forward stirring the coals under the fire.

  “I don’t have much of anything, Chief.”

  “That Christian shit’s all bullshit. Just another way people found to make a buck.” Ed spat into the coals and they sizzled and steam rose. Chief slid back from them, disgusted, shaking his head.

  “If there was a God he wouldn’t treat his people the way He does, making people do this kind of work, letting people blow up.” Demetrius yawned and stretched out arms that were heavily muscled and tatted.

  “Like that company prick said, no one forced you to be out here. You came for the money, didn’t you?” Hollywood took a long pull from his beer.

  “The hell I did. I didn’t enlist in this program. I was rottin in a cell same as you. And that ain’t much of an option,” countered Demetrius.

  “Should’a just stuck with the prison sentence if you’re gonna complain all the time.” Ed dribbled beer down the front of his shirt and then tried to quickly erase it with the back of his hand.

  “Suffering or not suffering is a perception. Men with nothing but the barest of essentials have lived happy and meaningful lives on this earth for centuries.” Joe lit up a cigar and after pulling a couple of puffs into his massive chest he exhaled, spreading the cloud around himself to ward off mosquitoes.

  “Well I want a hell of a lot more than the barest essentials,” said Demetrius, finally dropping his arms.

  “Your greed is nothing but a weakness, like these anomalies in the grid we uncover. They’re weak points, just ready to give out and crumble the structure, just like the weaknesses that you have inside you that wait to dismantle the rest of your life.” The evening was devoid of wind but the smoke surrounding Joe finally found a path to exit, slowly climbing invisible steps toward a dark sky.

  “The weakness is that crutch you call God. Learn to stand on your own.” Hollywood fired a can at a critter near the trucks. It caused the guards to spin and aim their weapons at the men momentarily. The animal took cover under a rusty black Ford that was nearby.

  “I’ve got Jesus.” Roger lifted a locket that was hanging around his neck. “Keep er in here. It’s my mother’s blood. She died when I was twelve. She was the closest thing I knew to God.”

  “Jesus came to my great ancestors in a canoe made of rock. How do you explain a canoe made of rock floating on the river, Rooster?” The chief was stirring the coals again.

  “A submarine’s a hell of a lot heavier than a canoe and somehow it manages,” Jeff said, trying to discourage the Chief from saving him.”You sure are a strange holy man, Chief. Didn’t you get caught trying to blow up Detroit?”

  “I had reasons.” He ran his hand across his head.”I was there to attempt an abortion. It’s best if some things never live.”

  “Things?” Jeff asked.

  “This thing. This thing we’re battling now. It’s not an infrastructure problem. It’s a being. Some of my brothers think that it is the earth that is complaining but they are wrong. It is a parasite that’s been sucking up the earth’s blood for centuries. It dies and comes back throughout history. It’s reborn now. Just a baby again. It’s one of the oldest spirits the world has known. This time it wants the blood of men too. It only knows greed and death and mayhem and destruction.”

  “I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying, Chief.”

  “I think you do, Rooster. You’re trying to tell me that you don’t feel the spirit when you approach the grid. It’s just like when you’re approaching a snake that burrowed deep in its nest, isn’t it? You know it’s there. You sense it. I know you do. You know exactly what’s going on.” He pierced a coal with the stick he was holding and pulled it from the fire so that it hung in the air, a glowing orb. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never seen my face? Can you do that? Have you never seen me before, Rooster? Not in any of your dreams?” The chief leaned forward, studying Jeff’s face. “Look at me, Rooster.”

  For a moment Jeff saw flashes of the man’s face in different memories in his mind but quickly dismissed the idea that those memories were real, figuring that the chief had somehow placed them there with some type of powerful hypnotic type of suggestion. Jeff had smoked some of the chief’s hooch earlier. Perhaps it had been laced with something. The air was thick with tension as the other men looked on, caught up, witnessing this strange accusation. Jeff decided to try to lighten things.

  “Your hair’s awfully pretty, Chief, but other than that, you’re really not my type. I don’t see you in my dreams.”

  The tension broke. The other guys snickered.

  “I am a spiritwalker, Rooster. I was born with the gift. One in a line of many medicine men that have graced our lineage. Rooster may be your nickname,” Chief went on, “but you are actually a rabbit in the spirit world. He is both your luck and your key to salvation. He’s the other half of you.” The light flickered off Chief’s face, revealing how serious he remained.

  “Didn’t you tell me when I met you that you were a Christian, Chief? I thought that Christians didn’t much believe in the animal spirit world.”

  “I am many things, a follower of Christ is just one of them.” He threw a paper pla
te on the coals and the fire surged. “I’ve had dreams of the sacrifice, the rabbit twisting in pirouettes on a tornado of fire, shooting up toward heaven.” He stared into the flames as he spoke. “As soon as I saw your face, Rooster, I knew it was you. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. I am of the crows. I realized that I belonged with you. Crows have an association with the rabbit. I was meant to befriend you, to comfort you, just as the ravens are here to help complete the sacrifice of the damned. That would be you, Rooster. You are the walking dead ever since you suffered a great loss. Something catastrophic.” The flames reflected off of Chief’s eyes. “The serpent below the earth’s skin knows the taste of men’s blood. Think of how many men it’s taken lately. It’s been claiming men by the hundreds, maybe thousands, but you are something different, Rooster. You are a special sacrifice to sooth the serpent, to lessen its wrath, to temporarily quench its thirst. Without your death there would be ten times as many eruptions, ten times as many deaths. Yes, the Ravens will assist with the sacrifice. That’s why they’re here. It will happen and that is your fate. Perhaps we will be required to join you in death. I will stand by you when the time comes.”

  “You, Chief, are totally out of your mind.” Hollywood raised his beer to the big Indian, with a strange new admiration.

  “Chief, I think you’ve had too many beers. Maybe it’s time to call it a night?” Sly Ed reached for his arm.

  “Leave him be. It’s what he believes. Let him talk.” Joe pointed an enormous arm at Ed, his eyes remaining locked on him until the old man sat down again.

  “I don’t believe any of this but you’ve got me curious. What ravens are you talking about, Chief?”

  “The four in our crew. They exist right in front of you but you barely see them. Try to remember their names and you can’t. Try to picture their faces, you can’t. They’re not men. You’ve never even heard them speak but you think you have. They have no histories being men, no place of origin. They’re only passing through. Soul collectors - here for you, and probably the rest of us.”

  There was a nervous silence for a minute as the men around the fire all stared at Chief before Jeff finally laughed. “You spin one hell of a ghost story, Chief. You really do.”

  “Let me grab my tom toms and bless us, Rooster,” said Chief, planting his hands in the dirt and starting to raise his heavy frame. “It will help you with your journey into the other side.

  “Hell no.”

  Jeff knew that it wasn’t going to be worth the fight when the chief got to his feet, drunken, and a little cross-eyed.

  “Let him do it, Rooster,” Joe said.

  Chief waited.

  “Ah shit, Chief.”Jeff sighed. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  The chief walked back toward the truck and one of the guards followed him. He returned with the tom toms that traveled with him. They had been passed to him by his grandfather. He sat down again and they all watched him call on the spirit world. While he sang, he called on the creator to protect Jeff’s passage and complete the sacrifice properly. Chief’s singing drew the attention of some passing rednecks that warned the men about the pagan devil shit they were engaging in.

  That night, after the others had retired, Jeff laid his head down in the cheap motel and dreamed that an enormous black snake, stretching hundreds of miles in length, emerged from the ground. It traveled to the edge of a small village and watched the people. Then it moved in quickly and attacked, chasing the children, picking them from the ground with its massive jaws and swallowing them when it caught them. His daughter Heidi was among the children, stumbling along, trying to escape. Jeff raced toward the snake and snatched his daughter up before the beast could get to her. The serpent reared up above him and washed him in flames. He did his best to shield his daughter with his body. The flames had no effect on Jeff, but when he looked down at his daughter she suddenly turned to ash and crumbled through his arms. He broke down and started to cry. Behind him, Chief stood in full ceremonial garb, eagle feathers crowning his head, beating his tom toms and calling out the names of different gods. Jeff woke up in a cold sweat, listening to the chief, still a little drunk, his singing permeating the poorly constructed walls of the motel.

  The next morning Jeff battled a worthy hangover to get out to the parking lot. There was no sign of the guards but there were signs of a struggle, and various size pools of blood, and tracks stained with blood running from the motel into the parking lot. In the parking lot sat the chief on the ground against the rear wheel of the truck, his grandfather’s tom toms smashed beside him, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands. Jeff felt like he should say something but couldn’t find the words. He considered running off since the guards were gone but then the thought of freedom without having to look over his shoulder quelled that idea.

  On the way to the repair site a company rep told Jeff over the communicator in the truck that he had been informed about the situation with the guards and that new men would arrive later in the day to replace them. He then commended Jeff for being sensible about the situation, not throwing away good time spent by making a run for it. Jeff confirmed that he’d heard him and ended the call.

  He arrived on the site where the equipment had been set up, exited the cab, and reached into the truck for his helmet. A pair of rabbit’s ears had been crudely glued to it. He shook his head before leaving the ears in place and putting the helmet on.

  Most of the crew had taken the opportunity with the missing guards to make an escape. Maybe Chief’s bizarre story had spooked them.

  There wasn’t a single animal in the surrounding woods to be seen. And it was quiet except for a few shrieking birds. It made Jeff think of a documentary he once saw in which people gave their testimonials about the rats on 911, how they came up from the sewers around the Twin Towers and ran down the street hours before the attack occurred, suggesting that some strange instinct caused the animals to know something bad was on the horizon.

  Jeff’s mind filled with anger as he remembered what the company man had said to him and the others the previous day. A couple hundred caskets are cheap compared to the cost of product.

  The line was exposed, the outside of it vibrating and sweating. Jeff took one look at it and told the remaining men that had shown up to leave. He even sent the man away that operated the resonator and watched the gauges that measured the level of poisonous gas in the air. He could operate both the gun and the resonator. He’d take his chances with poison.

  He sat down on the edge of the ditch and thought about all of the men that had died working for these greedy companies, giving their lives just to contribute to the massive wealth.

  He donned the rest of his gear. Then he looked up and saw Chief standing on the edge of the ditch wearing his head dress, beating one of his broken tom toms and singing in his native tongue. Jeff waved him off but he refused to leave. Before Jeff entered the ditch he looked up and through the glare of the sun bouncing off of his oxygen helmet, he made out dark birds circling high overhead, possibly ravens.

  With so many already dead, the long black serpent with the insatiable appetite raged below the surface of the earth and awaited his descent.