“Not enough fuel for the fire,” the wife adds.
“Not enough meat for the stew,” the girl finishes.
The man and woman come toward me as they speak these words, their movements spastic and halting, feet sliding across the dirt floor, disturbing the rushes, causing soft shssk-shssk-shssk sounds as they advance.
I do not waste time telling myself this cannot be happening. Gripping my cane as if it is a sturdy weapon instead of a simple length of wood, I run toward the door, throw it open, and dart into the street. My feet slip in the muck, and for an instant I fear I will fall, but I manage to remain standing. I pick a direction and start running, uncertain whether I’m heading toward the town’s outskirts or deeper toward its center, and I don’t care. I just want to get away from those three monstrosities. I have trouble trying to catch my breath inside my mask, but I don’t dare pull it off, not unless I wish to end up like the wretched creatures from which I’ve fled.
As I run, I become aware of doors opening in the stone buildings I pass. With my peripheral vision I see figures come forth: men, women, children, all moving with the same broken-stick motions as the family of living corpses I’m running from. I scream then—the sound muted by my mask’s beak—and I try to run faster, but I cannot breathe, my vision grays around the edges, and this time when I slip, I go down. The ground is surprisingly solid beneath the layer of muck, and the impact when I hit drives out what little breath remains in my lungs. I roll around in the filth like a mindless beast as I struggle to draw in air. I cast aside my cane and now claw at my mask with both hands, intending to yank it from my face, forgetting about the risk of infection, caring only about being able to take a breath. But my gloved fingers are slick with mud, shit, and piss, and I’m unable to get a grip on my mask. The mask’s glass eyes are covered with filth, and I cannot see the town’s dead draw near, but I feel the weight of their bodies as they fall upon me, one after the other. My bones snap like kindling, but I cannot draw in enough air to give voice to my agony. Merciful oblivion rushes in to claim me, but as I begin the final slide into non-existence, I hear a voice inside my mind. It might belong to the dead man I examined, or to his wife or daughter. Perhaps it belongs to all three.
“Next time,” the voice says, “the Threshold shall be reached. Next… time…”
And then the voice falls silent, and I am gone.
I come awake instantly. I’m sitting up in bed, blanket thrown off. I have the impression that I might have cried out in my terror, but only silence fills the room now. I inhale deeply to assure myself my lungs still work, but when I try to exhale, the air comes out in a series of barking coughs. As I struggle to get my breathing back under control, I realize the atmosphere in our bedroom is much warmer than it was when I went to sleep. Has there been an unseasonable shift in the weather?
No, of course not. I am feverish.
The implications of this strike me like a hammer blow, and I find myself recalling scattered fragments of the nightmare I just endured. Dream, vision, past-life memory, or some combination, it does not matter. What matters is the awful knowledge the nightmare imparted to me.
I turn toward Claire, and with a trembling hand I pull the blanket from her body. I look at her still form for several moments, then I place two fingers against the side of her cold neck. A moment later, I pull the blanket back over her, covering her head this time. How long has she been gone? Hours? Days? I must be mad—or near to it—to not have noticed her condition before now. Now I understand the origin of the sickly sweet smell in the room. It is the stink of new rot.
My poor, sweet wife…
I swing my stockinged feet over the side of the bed and stand. My head swims with vertigo, and I almost fall back, but I manage to remain upright until the worst of it passes. I put on my shoes, take hold of my medical kit, and I leave our bedroom for the last time. I go into Sarah’s room, and as I expect, I find her in the same condition as her mother. I gently kiss her forehead before pulling the covers over her, then I stand by her bedside for a moment, gazing down at her. Then I hear it—the music, coming from inside me. And with the hearing comes understanding, accompanied by overwhelming, indescribable joy.
“I hear it now, too,” I tell my dead daughter. “The voices singing—and they’re magnificent.”
I allow my medical bag—which is no longer needed—to slip from my fingers and thump to the floor. I then turn and leave the room. My fever intensifies as I begin to descend the stairs, my breath wheezing and rattling. My lungs feel heavy, as if filled with molten iron, and there is wet warmth on my lips. My nose has begun to bleed. As my symptoms rapidly worsen, the singing in my head becomes louder and clear, and my mouth stretches into a beatific smile.
They had tried to enter the world in the 1600’s—ancient beings, alien and powerful beyond comprehension, creatures to whom human concepts mean nothing, and human scales of measurement are meaningless. Gargantuan, microscopic…it’s all the same to them. Power such as theirs has no shape, no size, and they have bent that power to a single goal: finding a way back, and at last they have. Their gateway is disease, each corrupted cell—billions of them inside millions of dead and dying hosts—a portal between this world and theirs. And they’re almost ready to come through. They are massed at the Threshold, wild and ravening. But there are still those uninfected out there—not many, but some—and all of them, every single one, must fall in order for the gates to burst open and swing wide. This is where I come in, and others like me across the world. Fellow physicians, nurses, medical workers of every kind…The irony is delicious to the Ancient Ones. We shall go forth into the world, seek out those who still suffer the blight of good health, and we shall deliver them into the febrile embrace of Sickness. And when the last of our patients is gone, we shall follow, and then this world will be theirs forevermore, as it was always meant to be.
As I continue descending the stairs, the song within me swells, and my hands transform into sharp talons, my eyes become glossy black and beady, my nose and mouth fuse, grow hard, and lengthen into a sharp, obsidian beak. As I reach the ground floor of my house, I open the front door, let out a raucous caw of triumph, and set out to do my Lords’ work.
Amidst the Blighted Swathes of Gray Desolation
Lee Clark Zumpe
1.
“I SEEN THINGS I SHOULDN’TA SEEN OVER T’THE BARRIER,” BENITA Mullen said, her voice sounding uncharacteristically small and feeble. “I just had to follow ’em, see what kind ’a trouble they got themselves in.”
“Stop your wrigglin’, Mama.” Benita’s daughter used a damp cloth to cool her forehead. “The medic will come soon.”
“Soon,” Benita said, managing a reassuring smile for her two grown children. She knew no treatment would stop the inevitable. Her killer’s blade had gone too deep. She had lost too much blood trying to get back to her loved ones in the small, rustic farming village. “Don’t fret now,” she said, wiping a tear from her son’s cheek. “Been a good life.”
At 48, Benita was the oldest member of her clan. Like all the others, she had spent her life toiling in the fields. She and her extended family had worked just about every kind of crop imaginable in Florida: citrus, sugarcane, tomatoes, peppers, cotton, watermelons, peanuts, snap beans and potatoes. For Benita and her kin, recompense for the drudgery came in daily allotments of food and water, tolerable living conditions and suitable shelter, basic healthcare and—most importantly—the opportunity for select newborns to be “elevated.”
Neither Benita’s son Napoleon nor her daughter Zoe had been chosen by the administrators. They had, however, picked her sister’s little baby girl back in 1997; and, before that, one of her cousins. Her own mother told her that her grandmother’s twin sister had gone to the great, shining city in the north—a near-mythical metropolis known as Jacksonville.
“Listen good, you two,” Benita said. She struggled to remain composed as waves of pain radiated from the gash in her belly. “Don’t you
go gettin’ no ideas about revenge, you hear? Don’t go lookin’ for trouble—ain’t no reason. This is my doin’—I shoulda kept clear of ’em. Whatever that bunch over t’district twelve got into, you keep away from it. Administrators’ll catch ’em. You stay away from them folk and that church they built back in the shadows of that old orange grove. No tellin’ what kinda of thing they worship out there…no tellin’ what kinda wicked ceremonies they get up to.”
When the district medical officer arrived, the sun had already descended below the horizon, leaving only a shrinking reddish band as purple twilight overtook the skies. Benita had been dead for hours.
2.
“This has to be one of the most undemanding posts at Earthwatch.” Adeline Shepard sat in a comfortable chair, her eyes scanning a dozen rectangular screens affixed to the wall directly in front of her. Each screen displayed a color image detailing a specific setting along the barrier wall isolating the Polk Exclusion Zone. “It’s eight straight hours of watching dull moving pictures on monitors. It’s monotonous and it’s mind-numbing. Who would subject themselves to this kind of daily torture?”
“Third-year students at university,” Peter Sparks said. He sat behind Adeline, watching his own set of screens. “It may be dull, but it is necessary. You do understand that.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Tonight, Adeline had been assigned to observe District 12, 3rd Quadrant, Sections 5 through 16. “‘The objective of Border Security is twofold: Counteract unauthorized incursion and prevent contamination,’” Adeline said, quoting the handbook she had been given. “Nothing gets in and nothing gets out.”
“Pretty simple,” Peter said. “We’re here because we’ve earned the privilege. They trust us to remain focused.”
“I’ve been here six months, Peter. I haven’t even seen a mouse dart across the ground. Not a bird or a bug or a pack of opossums.” Border Security required its on-duty watchers to report any sign of activity, from traces of organic life to unexplained movement. Like most novices, Adeline had expected to catch something on her very first day. She quickly learned that in the zone, nothing moves—not even the wind. “If it wasn’t for the flashing red lights along the border wall, I’d swear I was watching old black-and-white photographs. It’s all lifeless and drab and horrible.”
Adeline’s succinct description of the bleak landscape beyond the border wall captured its starkness but not its scope. The countless monitor screens at the Earthwatch Border Security facility failed to suitably depict the extent of the devastation and barrenness.
“And if you don’t want those horrible things creeping into your world, you should do your job, Adeline.” His vehemence conveyed enough urgency and earnestness to make Adeline regret her offhand complaints. “I know you want to pursue other interests, find something that challenges you. For now, though, you have a job to do—and it’s a damned important one, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”
Adeline sat in silence for some time, staring intently at the lifeless, ash-colored scenery and feeling more than a little ashamed. The world had not always been this way: The sizable tracks of blasted wasteland had started as a minor aberration more than a century earlier on an insignificant plot of land outside a minor college town in what had once been known as Essex County, Massachusetts. What Adeline—and all those fortunate enough to be selected for a comprehensive education at one of the few remaining formal school systems—had learned about what shaped the course of history throughout the last century could be best defined as a slow-moving global catastrophe.
The first glimpse of the impending calamity happened in 1880, when an enigmatic meteor fell out of the sky and lodged itself into the ground on the property of a farmer named Nahum Gardner. While the impact itself caused little damage, over the next twelve months Nahum’s land became poisoned, his wife and children went mad and the whole family eventually died. The string of incidents that ensued might have been lost to history had Gardner not been wise enough to seek the counsel of a small group of academicians from nearby Miskatonic University. Their investigation generated more questions than conclusions, but their detailed records proved invaluable to subsequent generations of scientists when events resurrected interest in the old case.
As it turned out, the strange rock from space that befouled poor Nahum’s farm and brought madness and death to his family was not as rare as those Miskatonic scientists had hoped.
Between 1880 and 1916, eighteen more Gardner meteorites impacted agricultural lands at sites scattered across the world. The phenomenon went unnoticed until 1917, when, in the midst of the Great War, an unprecedented three hundred and twenty-two Gardner meteorites fell to Earth over a six-month period, each resulting in contamination of soil and ground water and rendering adjacent lands uncultivatable.
The urgency of the situation resulted in a cessation of hostilities in Europe and the formation of the League of Nations, an international organization tasked both with maintaining world peace and managing the unfolding disaster. Between 1920 and 1940, more than two thousand Gardner meteorites scarred the Earth’s surface, reducing food production significantly in most countries. The resulting famine killed hundreds of millions, reducing the world’s population to levels not seen since before the American Revolution. Cities emptied and fell to ruin. Governments collapsed. Borders ceased to exist as throngs of migrants roved the terrain, scavenging whatever they could find.
In response, surviving governments poured resources into developing agricultural biotechnology. At the same time—and because evidence showed the blighted areas were expanding—the industrial complex improved its containment and monitoring efforts, leading to new technologies. In North America, some semblance of civilization reemerged with the introduction of the exclusion zones and the accompanying barrier walls.
Adeline seldom wondered what the world might be like had the meteors not rained down out of the sky bringing their horrid blight. As she glared at the images transmitted by the twelve rectangular screens set before her, she found herself marveling at the inescapable emptiness and the hollowness of lost possibilities. No one could say with any certainty how long that ground would lay fallow. No one could guess when a glimmer of life might arise within that broad expanse haunted by endless mounds of dead vegetation blanketed by a fine gray dust.
Adeline wondered how many families had once lived within the lands now designated the Polk Exclusion Zone. She wondered how many towns had been abandoned, how many roads had once connected them and what had become of all the businesses and churches and homes and schools. Looking at the fractured trunks of long-dead trees that skirted the periphery, she wondered if anyone had ever spread out a blanket beneath their once sprawling boughs, taking refuge in the shade to enjoy a midday picnic.
All those magnificent live oaks now lay rotting along the rim, their uppermost limbs severed and scattered over the ashen ground.
There.
Adeline’s eyes caught something nearly imperceptible. Before words could form her hand reflexively reached out and pressed the appropriate button, marking the timestamp and alerting her supervisor. She heard an alarm sound in some distant office, heard raised voices chattering and chairs groaning as their occupants shifted nervously.
There.
She had not imagined it.
It moved right to left, an invisible shimmer of strange, uncanny colors. It glided like a disembodied shadow, wholly translucent and yet ominously unchanging. It proceeded slowly, deliberately, its progress seemingly measured in the increasing profundity of dread it kindled within the mind of the only person witnessing it. It muddied the background as it advanced. It disturbed the omnipresent gray dust, kicking up miniature clouds punctuated by swirling eddies.
What could it be, Adeline asked herself. A trick of light in the wasteland? A weather anomaly? A ghost?
During that brief interim of remote observation, she could not help but ascribe to it the inexpressible quality and poise of a living, breathing thing. More alarm
ingly, Adeline came to believe that whatever it was, it knew it was being watched—and the moment that thought occurred to her, the entity stopped in its tracks, changed its deportment and appeared to turn toward the camera.
A few seconds later, her supervisor arrived and the two women watched as something that should not be continued its stealthy trek before disappearing out of view.
“Oh my God,” Virginia Sandoval muttered, scribbling notes on a pad of paper. “It’s here.” She hesitated, summoning up the courage she had kept in reserve for this very purpose. As she collected her thoughts and analyzed the data, one aspect made perfect sense to her: Whatever was happening was taking place in District 12. “Assemble a team of perimeter patrol guards. I will lead the expedition personally.”
3.
The day after Benita Mullen died, her 18-year-old son Napoleon did something to which he was not at all accustomed: He disobeyed his mother’s instructions.
Napoleon spoke to his area inventory clerk and offered to take a small load of surplus vegetables to the clan elders in the 12th district to see if he could swap them for citrus. Administrators from the Department of Agriculture frowned on the practice, preferring to distribute allotments directly; still, they overlooked marginal trade between the farming settlements as long as it helped perpetuate some degree of autonomy. The clerk, eager to keep Napoleon from dwelling on his mother’s death, agreed to the plan.
Still grieving, the young man hiked the four miles of dirt road that connected the two settlements, hauling a cart overflowing with produce. As he approached, the adjacent barrier wall became the dominant feature on the western horizon—it seemed more dark and towering and imposing than ever. District 12’s small township had been built in its shadow, a poorly placed village resting just outside the exclusion zone. Many regional field laborers whispered that those who dwelled in that village suffered from their proximity to the blighted lands beyond the boundary. Some said those in District 12 could not go a single night without suffering from eerie dreams and nightmares—though none could guess what kinds of nightly terrors plagued them.
Through a Mythos Darkly Page 24
