Earthblood

A stalled car, all four doors open, with two corpses inside it.

Someone had stolen the shoes off the male body, and the inside of the vehicle had been searched, opened luggage tipped everywhere. Both the woman and the man had been shot at close range. The former with a single round through the back of the neck and her companion through the mouth. The rear of his skull had been blown apart, blood and brains crusted and black across the roof of the car.

“Ran out of gas. No food. He shot her and then himself,” suggested Jeff Thomas. Jed had been badly shaken by the discovery and didn’t argue with the interpretation of the scene.

The gun had been missing.

They hadn’t seen a living human being until well into the fourth day, heading along the pavement of Highway 95 toward Hawthorne. It had rained during the previous late afternoon, and they’d taken the opportunity to top up their water bottles at a frothing stream.

There’d been forty or fifty stalled vehicles along the way, many of them burned out, most with bodies close by. The corpses had all been weeks or months old, the skin dried and the lips peeled away. Many showed the unmistakable marks of having met violent deaths.

Jeff had been unusually subdued. “If it’s like this out in the boonies, think what it’s going to be like in the towns and the cities.”

Then they’d encountered the first of the barricades, on the outskirts of Hawthorne. A barrier of trucks was blocking the highway, with a handful of armed men standing near them, watching their approach.

“Close enough,” one of them had shouted.

“Can we pass through?” Jed was regretting that they hadn’t had a chance to obtain weapons. These men with the guns called the shots, but even one armed man would be superior to them.

“Where you come from?”

“South.”

“Vegas?”

“No. Why?”

“Plague there. Seen some of them, black swellings in their arms and groins.”

“Can we pass through?” Jeff Thomas had yelled.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Just ’cause we say not. Strangers don’t get in here. No food.”

Jeff had been starting to talk again when Jed nudged him. “Don’t tell them we got food. They could kill us for that.”

Jeff had nodded at his whisper, looking toward the barrier, sixty yards ahead of them.

“Can we go around?”

The barrel of the rifle had waved toward the west, toward the looming hills.

“That way, stranger, and don’t try sneaking in at night. You’ll get caught by one of our vigilante patrols and shot on sight.”

“Friendly bastards,” Jeff had said under his breath.

“Do like they say. Head up into the higher country.” Jed had tugged at Jeff’s sleeve. “Come on. Before they get interested in our backpacks.”

The men with the guns had watched them as they picked their way up a narrow trail among stunted, dead birches until they were out of sight.

The only consolation as they had walked through the endlessly dreary landscape of blackened and dying trees was the streams of fresh, clean water that tumbled from the peaks.

When they were clear of the northern edge of the township, Jeff had pointed to something below them. “What’s that?”

It looked like a huge pile of tangled wood. Thick trunks around six feet long, with smaller, thinner branches stuck out at odd angles. One whole side of the jumble of dark wood was blackened as though someone had tried to burn it out.

“Cords of kindling,” Jed had suggested. “Going to need plenty of wood around these parts once winter comes and there’s no electricity.”

Jeff had a small pair of powerful binoculars in his pack and he’d rummaged for them. Shuffling his feet on the narrow trail, he’d slowly turned the focus wheel, whistling between his teeth as he’d tried to focus on the woodpile.

“Oh, shit,” he’d said very softly.

Jed had guessed then what they were looking at before he took the glasses and checked for himself.

“Figure that must be the rest of the good folks of Hawthorne,” he’d said, viewing the pile of ragged, scorched corpses. Dozens upon dozens, jumbled with a dreadful lack of dignity, men and women and children, all unburied together.

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